LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

^.mong the Women Who Have Written 
FAMOUS BOOKS 



Book Lovers' Series 



Little Pilgrimages Among the Men 
Who Have Written Famous Books 

Little Pilgrimages Among the Women 
Who Have Written Famous Books 



C. PAGE & COMPANY 

200 Summer Street 
Boston, Mass. 



LITTLE 
PILGRIMAGES 

Among the Women Who Have Written 
FAMOUS BOOKS 

by 

E. F. HARKINS 
ahd 

C. H. L. JOHNSTON 

Illustrated 




BOSTON 

L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 

MDCCCCII 



THF i.'BRARY OF 
COWJRESS. 

TWO Coh-im KfcCtlVED 

OCT. 3! 1901 

COPVRIOMT ENTRY 

CLASS OL xxc no. 

'jLO CO i 
COP 3. 



Copyright, 1901, by 
L. C. Page 8f Company (Incorporated) 

All rights reserved 



Typography by 
The Heintzemann Press Boston 

Presswork by The Colonial Press 
C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston 



PREFACE 



THE purpose of this booh is to renew 
an intimate acquaintance with the 
women whom the American reading 
public regards as favorites, and to establish a 
like intimate acquaintance with the promis- 
ing newcomers. The story-writers included 
in the list represent all sections of the coun- 
try ; but this circumstance is quite accidental. 
Although it happily suits the scheme of the 
book, it stands first of all as a proof that 
the women whom the reading public honors 
are the products of many cities and of widely 
differing environments. 

There has been no hesitation about includ- 
ing a resident of England, Mrs. Craigie 
(John Oliver Hobbes), in the list, for she 
was born in America and loves no other 



PREFACE 



land so deeply ; nor have such favorites as 
Frances Hodgson Burnett and Amelia E. 
Barr been excluded, for, although of foreign 
birth, they have long considered themselves 
Americans. On the other hand, the fact 
that the book deals with the writers of stories, 
long and short, and not with poets, has neces- 
sitated the exclusion of favorites like Mrs. 
Julia Ward Howe and Mrs. Louise Chandler 
Moulton. 

The sketches are partly critical and partly 
biographical. They are the result of efforts 
to inform as well as to entertain. 

To many members of this gifted company 
the authors of "Little Pilgrimages" owe 
thanks for much new and valuable informa- 
tion and for numerous other courtesies ex- 
tended during the preparation of the volume. 



CONTENTS 



Page 

Preface 5 

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps 11 

Frances Hodgson Burnett 27 

Sarah Orne Jewett 43 

Mrs. Burton Harrison 59 

Charles Egbert Craddock 75 

Anna Katharine Green 91 

Molly Elliot Seawell 107 

Amelia E. Barr 125 

Mary E. Wilkins 141 

Octave Thanet 157 

Marshall Saunders 173 

Kate Douglas Wiggin 191 

Gertrude Atherton 205 

John Oliver Hobbes 223 

Lilian Bell 239 

Ruth McEnery Stuart 255 

Anna Farquhar 267 
Pauline Bradford Mackie . 283 

Mary Johnston 299 

Ella Anderson G. Glasgow 315 

Bertha Runkle 331 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Elizabeth Stuart Phelps 

(Mrs. Ward) Frontispiece 

Frances Hodgson Burnett 

(Mrs. Townsend) 27 

Sarah Orne Jewett 43 

Mrs. Barton Harrison 59 
Charles Egbert Craddock (Miss Murfree) 75 

Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Bohlfs) 91 

Molly Elliot Seawell 107 

Amelia E. Barr 125 

Mary E. Wilkins 141 

Octave Thanet (Miss French) 157 

Marshall Saunders 173 

Kate Douglas Wiggin (Mrs. Biggs) 191 

Gertrude Atherton • 205 

John Oliver Hobbes (Mrs. Craigie) 223 

Lilian Bell (Mrs. Bogue) 239 

Buth McEnery Stuart ' 255 

Anna Farquhar (Mrs. Bergengren) 267 
Pauline Bradford Mackie 

(Mrs. Hopkins) 283 

Mary Johnston * 299 

Ellen Anderson G. Glasgow 315 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS 
(WARD) 



/f STRANGER who came from some 
/J far western village and was making 
-^ -*- a first visit to Boston, is said to have 
thus addressed the bar-tender of an exclusive 
hotel : " Excuse me, but I am a stranger in 
this part of the country, and I want to ask 
you a question. Everywhere I go I see 
posters up like this : ' The Gates Ajar ! The 
Gates Ajar ! ' I'm sick to death of the 
sight of the durn thing ; I have n't darst to 
ask what it is. Do tell a feller! Is it a 
new kind of drink? " 

Such, indeed, may be called true, though 
unsolicited fame, and such was the popu- 
larity of Mrs. Ward's first novel of any 
pretensions, a popularity which returned a 
sale of nearly one hundred thousand copies 

11 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

in America, and was outrun by that in 
Great Britain. This, when compared with 
the enormous issues of popular fiction of 
the present day, does not, of course, seem 
extraordinary, but at the moment (1869) 
it was an almost unprecedented literary 
triumph. Translations were manifold. 
In France, Germany, Holland and Italy 
they appeared, yet from the inadequate 
copyright laws which then existed in this 
country, the just and honest rewards which 
were due the brilliant author were never 
received. 

Perhaps the most interesting edition of 
the book was a " sickly yellow thing," 
says Mrs. Ward, " covered with a canvas 
design of some kind, in which the wings of 
a particularly sprawly angel predominate. 
The print is abhorrent, and the paper such 
as any respectable publisher would deserve 
to be condemned for in this world and in 
12 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS 

that to come. In fact, the entire book 
was thus given out by one of the most en- 
terprising of English literary pirates as an 
advertisement for a patent medicine. I 
have never traced the chemical history of 
the drug, but it has pleased my fancy to 
suppose it to be the one in which Mrs. 
Holt, the mother of Felix, dealt so largely, 
and whose sales Felix put forth his mighty 
conscience to suppress." 

Previous to the appearance of this study 
of life actual and eternal, the existence of 
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps had indeed been a 
busy and intellectual one, yet similar to 
that of many a New England girl whose 
parents were of superior moral and intel- 
lectual fibre. It was the instinctive and 
inborn spark of genius which prompted 
the daughter of a hard-worked and over- 
burdened New England professor to pen a 
work at twenty years of age which showed 

13 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

a depth of insight and sympathy with the 
sorrows of life of one of twice her experi- 
ence. 

She was born in Andover, Massachusetts, 
on August 31, 1844, and inherited the 
keenest and most artistic literary talent 
from both her parents. Although " every- 
body's mother is a remarkable woman," 
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, the mother, was a 
reconciliation of tact and power between 
genius and domestic life, a similar represen- 
tation of which is seldom met with. A 
devoted, affectionate guardian and worthy 
adviser, she still found time to pen a num- 
ber of stories for other people's children, 
which gave her a wider audience than that 
of her own hearth, and one that clamored 
with greater eagerness for further produc- 
tions of her delicate imagination. The 
author of "Sunnyside," "The Angel on 
the Right Shoulder," and " Peeps at Num- 
14 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS 

ber Five," was a rare woman of great intel- 
lectual gifts, who did not allow the keen 
pleasure of writing to overbalance the stern 
duties of motherhood. 

Austin Phelps, the father, was Professor 
of Rhetoric in the Theological Seminary — 
a man of broad sympathies and with lit- 
erary gifts of marked power. His " Still 
Hour " is yet read, while his Andover lec- 
tures, which in book-form have become clas- 
sics, stand without peers to-day, and are the 
accepted text-books of his department. His 
appreciation of the uses and graces of lan- 
guage " very early descended like a mantle " 
upon the shoulders of his daughter. She 
learned to love reading, not because she 
was made to, but because she could not 
help it. The atmosphere she breathed 
was that of literature, and only that of the 
best. 

At the age of thirteen her first literary 

15 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

effort was sent to the Youtlis Companion, 
and was accepted. At the time she was a 
small, rather angular person, usually attired 
in a high-necked gingham dress, not in the 
least precocious, and very much of a tom- 
boy into the bargain. Far more likely, in 
fact, to be found on the top of an apple tree 
or walking the length of the Seminary fence 
than writing rhymes or reading " solid 
reading." " The story was about a sister 
who neglected her small brother, and hence 
defeated the first object of existence in a 
woman-child. It was very proper, very 
pious, and very much like what well- 
brought-up little girls were taught to do, 
to be, to suffer, or to write in those days." 
For this effort the paper which had printed 
her contribution appeared in the Andover 
post-box for a year, and addressed to the 
writer of the published semi-column. 

The stimulating influences within the 
16 



ELIZABETH STUAET PHELPS 

great white house with its intellectual in- 
mates, and the very atmosphere of Andover 
itself, were not long in fostering renewed 
desires for literary triumphs. The country 
was soon upon the eve of a great conflict, 
and the fierce, eddying tide in Virginia 
caught with it many of the fair young 
forms intimate with the peaceful village 
life. The departure of friends and ac- 
quaintances in their rough clothes of blue 
made a great impression upon the receptive 
mind of the timid girl, and her own feel- 
ings of sorrow, together with a knowledge 
of the mental sufferings of others who re- 
mained at home, soon found voice in what 
might justly be called her first literary ven- 
ture — a story of the war which appeared 
in Harper's Magazine, and for which she 
received a cheque for twenty-five dollars. 
This was in January, 1864, and its name, 
"A Sacrifice Consumed." The narrative 

17 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

was of a poor and plain little dressmaker 
who lost her lover in the army. It was a 
simple tale, but full of that delicate and 
sympathetic appreciation of womanly sor- 
row which Mrs. Ward is able to portray 
with greater truthfulness, perhaps, than any 
living American author. Her father read 
it in printed form — she had not shown it 
to him before — and his genuine emotion 
gave her a "kind of awed elation which 
has never been repeated in her experience." 
She now was launched upon the sea of 
literary venture, and wrote with a distinct 
purpose and quite steadily, contributing 
stories of various lengths to the different 
magazines with marked success, although 
she herself confesses that, had her first con- 
tribution been refused, or even the second, 
or the third, she would not have written 
again. Discovering soon enough that one 
cannot live by bread or by magazine stories 
18 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS 

alone, like many another who toils in the 
ways of this most nnremunerative of all pro- 
fessions, she did hack work and Sunday- 
school books by the score. The appearance 
of a little story called " The Tenth of Janu- 
ary," which was founded upon the wreck of 
the Pemberton Mills at Lawrence, and 
upon which she spent nearly a month 
of preparation, distinctly marked the 
first recognition she received from literary 
people. The catastrophe upon which this 
I sketch was founded had indeed been a ter- 
l rible one. At five o'clock one January after- 
i noon, when all hands were upon duty, the 
roof, the walls, and machinery of a great 
building, crowded with working-men and 
women, had given way and fallen with crush- 
! ing weight upon the bodies of seven hun- 
dred living human beings. Fire, fierce and 
uncontrollable, had added to the horror, 
and the plight of the poor working girls who, 

19 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

caught within the ruins beyond all hope of 
escape, went to their death with the songs of 
those hymns they had learned at church upon 
their lips, made an impression, not only upon 
the author but upon all who had seen and 
heard, which was as indelible as a mark 
upon marble that years alone can erase. For 
the best part of a month she investigated 
every avenue of information which might 
throw some light upon the tragedy, even to 
consulting engineers, physicians, officers, 
and newspaper men, and making a com- 
plete study of all files of local newspapers 
with articles bearing upon the tragedy, so 
that whatever she had to say would be from 
the fullest and most complete knowledge. 
Then the story was written. After its peru- 
sal, the poet Whittier wrote her his first 
letter and said enough to keep up the courage 
of the youthful aspirant to literary fame, a 
letter which to a self -distrustful nature like 
20 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS 

her own, was as stimulating as a life-pre- 
serving tonic. 

The inspiration for her next book, " The 
Gates Ajar," came spontaneously. The 
angel in her said, " Write ! " and she wrote. 
She says : " The book grew so naturally, it 
was so unpremeditated, it came so plainly 
from the something not one's self which 
makes for uses in which one's self is extin- 
guished, that there are times when it seems 
to me as if I had no more to do with the 
writing of it than the bough through which 
the wind cries, or the wave by means of 
which the tide rises." Its composition con- 
sumed the greater part of two years, years 
when the country was permeated with the 
spirit of a general grief. The regiments were 
returning with depleted ranks, the streets 
were dark with sorrowing women, the gay- 
est scenes were black with crape, — in truth, 
a world of woe into which her book stole 

21 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

forth, trembling. " It was written to com- 
fort some few of the women whose misery 
crowded the land — the helpless, outnumber- 
ing, unconsulted women, they whom war 
trampled down without a choice or protest ; 
the patient, limited, domestic women, who 
thought little but loved much, and, loving, 
had lost all" — to them she wished to 
speak. The success of her efforts was mar- 
vellous, although a storm of criticism was 
called forth, both favorable and unfavorable 
to the spirit that dared to produce a concep- 
tion of the future life which was foreign to 
all preconceived ideas. 

From the time of its publication to the 
present day, Mrs. Ward has conversed 
through the medium of her many works to 
an ever-appreciative and enlarging audience. 
Beneath her writing there is a distinct 
moral purpose, so that it does not appeal 
perhaps to some critics who hold fast to the 
22 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS 

belief that nothing is worthy of high praise 
unless it is written " for art's sake alone." 
This idea she has always sacrificed to the 
moral influence with which it was her ear- 
nest desire to impregnate the pages of what- 
ever story she has endeavored to tell, for 
her every production has been with the idea 
of helping those who read. She believes the 
old rhetorical law that a high and noble 
subject should be more worthy of a high and 
noble medium of art than a low one, and 
that it is not necessarily inartistic to do a 
good and helpful thing, provided the medium 
through which it reaches others is not wholly 
and distinctly bad. 

In 1888 she was married to the Rev. 
Herbert D. Ward, with whom two of her 
more recent novels have been written. 
They are " The Master of the Magicians " 
and " Come Forth." Perhaps her most 
popular production, at the present time of 

23 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

writing, is "A Singular Life," published 
in 1896, but that which she regards as 
her most important work, " The Story of 
Jesus Christ," was published in the fall of 
1897. These have, for the most part, been 
written in an unpretentious but attractive 
house at Newton Centre, where is her win- 
ter home. In summer, she has for many 
years been an ever-welcome and apprecia- 
tive visitant of Eastern Point, Gloucester, 
where her work in favor of the great cause 
of temperance among the fisher folk of the 
sea-faring town nearby, has greatly en- 
deared her to the native born and stimu- 
lated them with a love and respect that is 
universal and sincere. Her " Story of 
Jack," a young fisherman who ruined his 
life and met his death through drink, is 
perhaps one of the best appeals for temper- 
ance that has yet appeared. At present 
she is much interested in the anti-vivisection 
24 



ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS 

movement, and is spending much time and 
energy in its behalf. 

As a literary artist of the most successful 
type who can well speak with a tone of 
authority, it is of importance and great 
interest to learn her views and comments 
upon those who contemplate a literary 
career : " Write if you must, not otherwise," 
she says. " Do not write if you can earn a 
fair living at teaching or dressmaking, at 
electricity or hod-carrying. Make shoes, 
weed cabbages, survey land, keep house, 
make ice-cream, sell cake, climb a telephone 
pole. Nay, be a lightning-rod peddler or a 
book agent before you set your heart upon 
it that you shall write for a living. Do any- 
thing honest, but do not write, unless God 
call you and publishers want you and people 
read you and editors claim you. v Respect 
the market laws. Lean on nobody. 
Trust the common sense of an experienced 

25 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

publisher to know whether your manu- 
script is worth something or nothing. Do 
not depend on influence. Editors do not 
care a drop of ink for influence. What 
they want is good material, and the 
fresher it is, the better. An editor will 
pass by an old writer any day for an un- 
known and gifted new one with power to 
say a good thing in a fresh way. Make 
your calling and election sure. Do not 
flirt with your pen. Emerson's phrase 
was, 'toiling terribly. 9 Nothing less will 
hint at the grinding drudgery of a life 
spent in living i by your brains.' " 



26 




FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT 
(MRS. TOWNSEND) 



TAY the name of Frances Hodgson 
m~~\ Burnett she is still known, although 
* ^ early in 1900, in Genoa, Italy, she 
became Mrs. Stephen Townsend. 

Generally, too, she is thought of as an 
American, while, as a matter of fact, she 
is English by birth. However, during the 
greater part of her life she has been an 
American in sympathy, as well as in resi- 
dence ; it is America which has awarded 
her the highest praise as a woman and the 
heartiest applause as an author ; it is 
American incidents which constitute the 
subject of her most ambitious novel; it 
was at an American university that her son 
Vivian was educated ; and numerous other 
ties have made her sufficiently American 

27 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

to warrant giving her a place in this book. 
As a writer said a few years ago " Ameri- 
cans regard Mrs. Burnett as a country- 
woman." 

Mrs. Burnett was born in Manchester, 
England, on November 24, 1849. Her 
father, who was a well-to-do merchant, died 
when she was ten years old ; and not long 
after the father's death the Hodgson's 
moved to Tennessee, whither an uncle of 
Frances had preceded them. But even 
before leaving England the little girl's 
remarkable powers of observation had been 
put into practice. The story goes : the 
English home of the Hodgsons was in 
Islington Square, and in the rear of it, 
at the end of the yard, was an alley on 
which were the homes of working people. 
Through the bars of an iron gate, as a little 
child, Frances watched the people who 
lived in the alley. One day, when the little 
28 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT 

Hodgson girl was only nine years old, she 
saw the face of the girl whom she after- 
ward called " That Lass o ' Lowrie's." She 
saw the lass only twice. Once the little 
thing was in the midst of a group of 
children, knitting away and moving among 
them with an authoritative air ; the second 
time the lass was retreating home, proudly 
yet obediently, before a coarse and brutal 
father. 

Upon reaching America the Hodgsons 
settled in Knoxville, but the War of the 
Rebellion ruined the uncle's business, and 
so the mother gathered her two sons and 
three daughters about her and went to live 
in a log cabin in the country. At that 
time, Frances, according to a friend who 
has known her from childhood, was " a 
bright girl of fourteen, who had been care- 
fully educated in a private school, was 
thoroughly grounded in her English studies, 

29 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

spoke French fluently, and was a good 
musician." This same friend, by the way, 
assures us that " Frances was able to read 
by the time she was three years old, and 
before she was five she was writing little sto- 
ries in her copy-book. She produced the great- 
est quantity of this sort of literature before 
she was twelve, but when it was decided 
that they were to come to America, Fran- 
ces, with the courage of a Spartan, made a 
holocaust of the small library." 

The misery into which the Hodgson's 
were thrown, first by an unprofitable settle- 
ment of the father's estate and afterwards by 
the adversity of the uncle, acted as a heavy 
strain upon Mrs. Hodgson, who, the daughter 
of a cotton manufacturer of large means, 
had been reared in luxury ; and at the end 
of a few years the strain proved her death. 

But, meantime, the children took up 
hard work enthusiastically. Frances got a 
30 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT 

position as a school teacher. The parents 
of the children whom she taught paid her 
in eggs, flour, bacon, potatoes and other 
country produce; and on this primitive 
kind of salary the family subsisted. " They 
were not an unhappy family even then," 
says a witness of their struggles, " though 
the boys had to undertake work of a 
humble and laborious sort, and their whole 
existence was one of dire toil and depriva- 
tion. They were jolly young people who, 
when work was over, had concerts together, 
each playing a different instrument ; and 
all of them were fond of books, of which 
they managed by hook or by crook to 
possess themselves." 

Frances's hobby was story-writing, to 
quote what an intimate acquaintance 
of the author wrote when Mrs. Burnett 
first moved to Washington ; " We can well 
imagine no day dreary and no evening long 

31 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

in that household, a circle which in later 
years has become familiar through her pen 
as ' Vagabondia.' The first essay at a story 
that might go beyond the approving audi- 
ence of ' Vagabondia ' was attempted in her 
thirteenth year ; written and read, not told, 
to her two sisters when she was nearly fif- 
teen. Edith, the younger member of the 
household, saw practical financial results in 
this production and promptly advised send- 
ing it where such things were paid for. 
The young author was startled at the pro- 
posal, though doubtless her mind had al- 
ready awakened to the possibilities of a 
future success, if not fame. The only dif- 
ficulty to the younger sister's mind seemed 
to be postage stamps ; neither had the nerve 
to ask the head of the family, the elder 
brother, for the few pennies, lest the shy 
maiden and her aspirations should become 
the subject of ridicule. The difficulty was 
32 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT 

overcome by the Betsey Trot wood of the 
family, as Edith was significantly called, 
who proposed that they should gather a 
basket of wild grapes from a neighboring 
wood and the lucre thereby obtained should 
be used to send the precious manuscript to 
BalloiCs Magazine." 

And to that basket, we may remark hangs 
a romantic tale. But, first, let the other 
story go on ; 

" The answer was gratifying and compli- 
mentary, but the offer was to publish the 
story without remuneration. It was far 
more than the young writer had expected, 
but it was not satisfactory to Trotwood, 
who sagely remarked that " if it was worth 
praising it was worth paying for " ; so by 
request it was returned. Then it was sent 
to Godey's Lady's Book, whose editor not 
only accepted it, but also several other manu- 
scripts, on fair terms, thereby having the 

33 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

distinction of first giving encouragement to 
a pen that has won a world-wide recogni- 
tion. Later Miss Hodgson became a regu- 
lar contributor to Peterson's Magazine. . . . 
Mr. Peterson not only was publisher, but 
became an interested personal friend. To 
him, more than to anyone else, she feels 
indebted for the encouragement that in- 
duced her to continue in the arduous work." 

Once Mrs. Burnett was trapped — we 
use the expression advisedly, for she seldom 
unearths the past — into a reminiscent 
mood, and she gave virtually the same ver- 
sion of her first experience with publishers. 
The story was " Miss Carruther's Engage- 
ment." Mr. Ballou said it was a good 
story, but that he could not afford to pay 
for it. So at the author's request, he re- 
turned it. Finally it reached Godey's. 

" Their readers," says Mrs. Burnett, 
" doubted its orginality, and Mr. Godey 
34 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT 

wrote me that he liked the story, and if I 
could prove that it was original he would pay 
me twenty dollars for it and that I might 
set about writing another at once. I wrote 
in reply, showing them that the story was 
undoubtedly my own, and to prove it sent 
them another, called « Hearts and Diamonds ' 
and for the two I got thirty-five dollars." 

" Do you remember your sensations on 
seeing your first story in print?" Mrs. 
Burnett was asked. 

" Yes, I can," she answered. " I know I 
read the story over and over again, and it 
seemed much more interesting and better 
than it did in manuscript. The money I got 
seemed to be a great deal, and I felt that 
my vocation in life was fixed ; and, indeed, 
I have been writing from that day to this." 

The old files have been ill-kept, and we 
have not been able to trace the author's 
career back farther than a story called 

35 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

"Ethel's Sir Launcelot," which appeared 
in Peterson 's in November, 1868. 

The acceptance of "Miss Carruther's 
Engagement " and " Hearts and Diamonds " 
certainly did fix their author's vocation, as 
the reading world knows; but let us go 
back to the basket of fruit that the Hodg- 
son sisters picked that memorable day. The 
fruit was sold to the mother of a young 
man named Burnett — Swan Moses Bur- 
nett ; to which young man in 1873, after 
he had taken his degree as Doctor of Medi- 
cine, Frances Eliza Hodgson was married. 
He was twice Miss Hodgson's age. It is 
said that in Mrs. Burnett's " Lass o ' 
Lowrie's " may be found a " spiritual de- 
scription of him as he first appeared to her. 
The hero with the crippled arm was in real 
life so crippled, that he was obliged to walk 
with one knee stiffened, using the toe of 
his foot to step upon. His face, while 
36 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT 

having somewhat of the painful expression 
of a physical sufferer, possessed in a high 
degree the beauty of intelligence. Its ex- 
pression was sensitive, sympathetic, and, 
above all, intellectual. All these qualities 
distinguished the young man. Observation 
was habitual with him, and, at first, he be- 
came interested in the girl merely out of 
curiosity. She attracted him even more by 
her brightness than by her prettiness." 

They were married in 1873 and divorced 
in 1898. They had two children, Lionel, 
who died in Paris ten years ago of consump- 
tion, and Vivian, who is the subject of his 
mother's most popular story, " Little Lord 
Fauntleroy." It is a curious circumstance 
that the petition for the divorce of the 
Burnetts was filed the day Vivian came of 
age. Yet the doctor, who, by the way, is a 
celebrated eye specialist, and his gifted wife, 
were uncommonly devoted to each other in 

37 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

the early days of their romance, as we shall 
see. 

After Frances's literary bow the Hodg- 
sons prospered. They were able soon to 
move into a pretty, yine-covered house, 
which, at the young author's suggestion, 
they significantly called Mt. Ararat. Just 
after Frances's engagement to Dr. Burnett, 
Mrs. Hodgson died, and for some time lit- 
erature and domestic economy were in each 
other's way. But one of the Hodgson 
boys married a sister of Dr. Burnett, and, 
relieved of her new burden, Frances, already 
well-known as the author of "Surly Tim's 
Troubles" (Scribner's, 1872), visited Eng- 
land. Upon her return she and the am- 
bitious young doctor were made husband 
and wife. But of what avail was his ambi- 
tion without the means of satisfying it ? So 
his wife, in a little more than one year, 
wrote three novels ; then the Burnetts — 
38 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT 

Lionel had been born — moved to Paris. 
There Vivian, the second son, was born. 
When the doctor had completed his studies 
the family came back to this country and 
settled down in Washington. There Dr. 
Burnett still lives. He is spoken of by his 
friends as a kind and brilliant man. 

" That Lass o' Lowrie's " was planned 
during Mrs. Burnett's visit to Manchester 
just before her first marriage, and was pub- 
lished in 1877. So discriminating a critic 
as Richard Grant White referred to the 
story as " the flower and crown of all re- 
cent fiction." That and "Pretty Polly 
Pemberton " and " The Fire at Grantley 
Mills " were the tales which met the ex- 
penses of the journey to Paris. 

One of her novels, " A Fair Barbarian," 
was the first work of an American roman- 
cist to receive the compliment of publication 
in the Century after it had been published 

39 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

in another magazine — Peterson 's. The 
success of " Little Lord Fauntleroy," by 
far the most popular of the author's works, 
and,> in truth, one of the most popular bits 
jof fiction ever written, has barely faded, 
although it was achieved in 1886. The 
dramatization of the story alone brought 
Mrs. Burnett a handsome fortune. It was 
the talk of the literary world when the 
graduate of the Tennessee log cabin bought 
herself a palatial house on Massachusetts 
Avenue, Washington. The success of " A 
Lady of Quality," both as a novel and as a 
play, added another heap to the novelist's 
gold; and then she took a house in Port- 
land Place, London, and a magnificent 
country seat, Maytham Hall, Rolvendon, 
Kent. She and Mr. Townsend collaborated 
in the dramatization of " A Lady of Qual- 
ity." Mr. Townsend is also the author of 
a novel, " A Thoroughbred Mongrel." 
40 



FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT 

Up to date, Mrs. Burnett's — or Mrs. 
Townsend's — great disappointment has 
been the comparative failure of " The De- 
Willoughby Claim." " I now look upon 
it," she said, before it was published a 
couple of years ago, " as my greatest work, 
and what I hope to make the great 
American novel." It was brushed aside by 
greater American novels, and some of Mrs. 
Burnett's oldest friends among the critics, 
scolded her for it. 

Mrs. vBurnett's new book, "The Making 
of a Marchioness," appears too late for our 
criticism. We understand that the author 
is at work on two other novels, at least one 
of which will be published next year. 

" Hard mental work," says one who saw 
her lately, "has not left marks with Mrs. 
Burnett. She is as rosy and young-looking 
as she was fifteen years ago, with the same 
tawny hair and the same baby-like eyes." 

41 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 



Rosy then, and young-looking still, rich, 
happy in a new-found love, somewhat eccen- 
tric, enjoying praise — such is Mrs. Bur- 
nett to-day. 



42 




SARAH ORNE JEWETT. 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 



^^vNCE upon a time some critic found 
m M a resemblance between Miss Jewett 

^^ and one of the old Flemish paint- 
ers — found a resemblance between her 
stories and the groups of Jan van Eyck or 
Roger van der Weyden. He was a dis- 
cerning critic, for her stories and the old 
masters' pictures are alike in many re- 
spects. They have a reality that is quite 
photographic, and yet they suggest a strong 
imagination. Their purity is remarkable, 
and yet their atmosphere is very earthly. 

Better still, however, it seems to us, it 
would be to say that there is a strong re- 
semblance between Miss Jewett and Jean 
Francois Millet. They both have digni- 
fied the meek and the lowly ; they both 

43 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

have exhibited the tenderest sympathy 
with the plain sons of Adam and Eve that 
live far from the madding crowd ; they 
both have done this noble and ennobling 
work enthusiastically yet unaffectedly, 
modestly but, ah ! how artistically. They 
that take pleasure in " The Angelus," will 
take pleasure also in " Deephaven." 
Millet, too, knew his characters intimately ; 
he had struggled and suffered like them. 
From such painful strenuousness Miss Jew- 
ett fortunately has been able to keep aloof, 
for Barbizon is not like South Berwick, and 
the French peasants would say that the 
countryfolk of Maine lived royally. But 
we have heard it said that Miss Jewett is 
like her books, and that in ten minutes 
she unconsciously tells you how she writes 
them. 

Kate Sanborn once essayed a descrip- 
tion of her friend and contemporary, in 
44 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

which she observed : " I feel a certain 
shrinking from attempting a personal 
sketch of this gifted woman, whom we all 
love for her absolutely perfect pictures of 
New England life." Anyone who essays 
the description must feel as Kate Sanborn 
felt, and yet, in such a case, a sketch 
poorly or inadequately done is better than 
no sketch at all. The lesson will be pres- 
ent, if not the eloquence. The old Flem- 
ish painters made portraits of themselves, 
but as yet, we hardly need say, Miss Jew- 
ett has given us no sketch of herself. 

Sarah Orne Jewett was born at South 
Berwick, Maine, on September 3, 1849. 
Her father was Dr. Theodore Herman 
Jewett, a physician of no small renown ; 
her mother was the daughter of Dr. Perry 
of Exeter, another physician well-known in 
central New England during the middle of 
the last century. The house in which she 

45 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

was born is still standing, although it was 
built far back in the eighteenth century, 
and it still excites the author's warmest 
affection. " I was born here," she said, 
as she stood in its panelled hall a few years 
ago, " and I hope to die here, leaving the 
lilac bushes still green and growing, and 
all the chairs in their places." 

You will meet glimpses of Miss Jewett's 
father in " A Country Doctor," but the 
nearest and clearest glimpse is in his 
daughter's personal sketch of him : 

" My father had inherited from his father 
an amazing knowledge of human nature, 
and from his mother's French ancestry 
that peculiarly French trait called gaietS 
de cceur. Through all the heavy respon- 
sibilities and anxieties of his busy profes- 
sional life, this kept him young at heart 
and cheerful. His visits to his patients 
were often made delightful and refreshing 
46 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

to them by his kind heart, and the charm 
of his personality. I knew many of the 
patients whom he used to visit in lonely 
inland farms or on the sea-coast in York 
and Wells. I used to follow him about si- 
lently, like an undemanding little dog, con- 
tent to follow at his heels. I had no con- 
sciousness of watching or listening, or 
indeed of any special interest in the coun- 
try interiors. In fact, when the time 
came that my own world of imagination 
was more real to me than any other, I was 
sometimes perplexed at my father's direct- 
ing my attention to certain points of inter- 
est in the characters or surroundings of 
our acquaintances. I cannot help believ- 
ing that he recognized, long before I did 
myself, in what direction the current of 
purpose in my life was setting. Now as I 
write my sketches of country life, I remem- 
ber again and again the wise things he 

47 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

said, and the sights he made me see. He 
was impatient only with affectation and 
insincerity." 

Miss Jewett was a delicate child, and, 
consequently, was encouraged by her father 
to spend much of her time outdoors ; and 
outdoors she formed her extraordinarily 
intimate acquaintance with nature and 
with the inhabitants of the Agamenticus 
region. She played even more eagerly 
than did the other children of the town, 
but when she went to school she readily 
outstripped her classmates. It is said that 
at the academy she found verse easy and 
prose difficult, but such conditions are not 
unusual. Youth takes naturally to rhymes 
and to games. 

Once someone inquired of the author of 

" A Country Doctor " when the literary 

bent took possession of her. " I can scarcely 

say anything about that," she answered, 

48 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

" for I began to write so early. But my 
first serious encouragement was the accept- 
ance of a short story by The Atlantic 
Monthly when I was between nineteen and 
twenty years old." That story was " Mr. 
Bruce," published in December, 1869. 

We believe that Miss Jewett was about 
fourteen when she wrote "Lucy Garron's 
Lovers." Between that age and the age 
when she was welcomed to The Atlantic 
Monthly she published little sketches in 
Young Folks and in The Riverside, Her 
first great popular success was " Deep- 
haven," which appeared in 1877. 

" Popular success " however, hardly 
expresses the reception of "Deephaven." 
" Artistic success " might be a fitter expres- 
sion. The fact is, Miss Jewett's works are 
not popular, as Miss Johnston's, say, are 
popular. James Russell Lowell used the 
right words when, shortly before his death, 

49 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

he wrote to the London publishers of the 
New England author's books : "I am very 
glad to hear that Miss Jewett's delightful 
stories are to be reprinted in England. 
Nothing more pleasingly characteristic of 
rural life in New England has been writ- 
ten, and they have long been valued by the 
judicious here." 

The same might be said to-day — " they 
have long been valued by the judicious 
here." No writer has a more devoted, 
more admiring public than the Bostonian. 
For we may call her a Bostonian, notwith- 
standing her loyalty to Berwick, or Bar- 
wick, as the natives say. During the last 
quarter of a century she has been the almost 
inseparable companion of Mrs. James T. 
Fields, who loves Boston no less than the 
"judicious" Bostonians love and respect 
her. Back in 1882 the serene and noble 
Whittier addressed a sonnet to them as 
50 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

they set sail for Europe — a sonnet inter- 
esting to quote : 

Outbound your bark awaits you. Were I one 
Whose prayer availeth much, my wish 

would be 
Your favoring trade wind and consenting 
sea. 
By sail or steed was never love outrun, 
And, here or there, love follows her in whom 
All graces and sweet charities unite, 
The old Greek beauty set in holier light ; 
And her for whom New England's byways 

bloom, 
Who walks among us welcome as the spring, 
Calling up blossoms where her light feet 

stray. 
God keep you both, make beautiful your 
way; 
Comfort, console and bless ; and safely bring, 
Ere yet I wake upon a vaster sea 
The unreturning voyage, my friends to 
me. 

Whittier was accustomed to attend 
Friends' meetings in Berwick, and it was 
in the old town that he, typical of the old 

51 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

New England literary traditions, and Miss 
Jewett, the type of the newer, made each 
other's acquaintance ! The sweet poet was 
greatly pleased by " Deephaven," and he 
heartily interested himself in its writers 
progress until he died. 

Miss Jewett divides her time between 
Boston, Berwick and Manchester-by-the- 
Sea — the same Manchester that prompted 
Dr. Holmes to write " Beverly-by-the- 
Depot." The larger part of her literary 
work is done in the old Maine settlement, 
to whose name, by the way, no South was 
prefixed originally. Plain Berwick it was 
known as in the lively, picturesque days, 
when bronze-faced sailors rolled barrels of 
rum up and boxes of tobacco and stranger 
wares down the north Atlantic wharves. 
From one who visited her in Maine a few 
years ago we gather this description of the 
Jewett homestead : 
52 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

" It seems as if one had no right to say 
so much about a house which is a home. 
And yet New England has few like this, 
and it is a part of her brave history. There 
are few such broad, high halls, arched and 
panelled; few such wide stairways with 
carved and polished railings, few such 
quaint gilded mirrors and antique portraits 
and last century bedsteads with white can- 
opies. . . Behind the house is a big old- 
fashioned garden, and every room is sweet 
with posies. There is a stable, too, for 
Miss Jewett loves her horses, and drives 
almost daily over the green hills ... of the 
beautiful coast of Maine. She is an oars- 
woman as well, and her boat knows every 
reach of the river and all its quiet sunlit 
groves. . . Miss Jewett's " den " is the most 
delightful I have ever seen. It is in the 
upper hall, with a window looking down 
upon a tree-shaded village street. A desk 

53 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

strewn with papers is on one side, and on 
the other a case of books and a table. Pic- 
tures, flowers and books are everywhere. 
The room set apart for the library is one of 
the four great square ones downstairs. But 
the books overflow it. They lie upon the 
sofas, and have shelves in the bedrooms. 
It is the house of a woman who studies, 
Scott, particularly. . . " The busier I get," 
she said, " the more time I make to read 
the Waverley novels." 

Mention of the " den " brings us up to 
Miss Jewett's method of working. She 
has moods ; she does not make writing a set 
daily task, with so many pages to be done 
at a certain hour, as a Haverstraw laborer 
would have so many bricks. We have 
heard it said that sometimes her day's work 
amounts to eight or ten thousand words. 
That indeed would be a prodigious effort. 
Marion Crawford is one of the swiftest 
54 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

writers we ever heard of, and his ordinary 
limit is six thousand words a day. Possibly 
the truth about Miss Jewett's industry has 
been exaggerated. More reasonable is the 
statement that while engaged on a novel 
she pens from two to four thousand words 
a day. Between books she enjoys periods 
of physical recreation and literary con- 
struction. 

" Of your own books, which do you like 
best?" Miss Jewett was once asked. 

" They're a pretty large family now," 
and she smiled. " There are always per- 
sonal reasons, you know, and associations 
that may influence one's judgment. I don't 
think I have a favorite. In some ways I 
like ' A Country Doctor ' best, and yet I 
believe ' A Marsh Island ' is a better 
story." 

Her latest work, " A Tory Lover," was 
concluded in The Atlantic Monthly last 

55 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

August, two months after Bowdoin College 
had bestowed upon her the degree of Doctor 
of Letters. 

" I have only written," she said to a lit- 
erary brother a few years ago, " about 
what I knew and felt. In giving any idea 
of the influences which have shaped my 
literary life, I must go back to the sur- 
roundings of my childhood, and to those 
friends who first taught me to observe and 
to know the deep pleasures of simple things, 
and to be interested in simple and humble 
lives. I was born in an old colonial house 
in South Berwick, which was built about 
1750. My grandfather had been a sea- 
captain, but retired early and engaged more 
or less in the flourishing shipping trade of 
that time. This business in all its branches, 
was still in existence in my early child- 
hood, and so I came into contact not only 
with the farming and up country people, 
56 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

but with sailors and shipmasters and lum- 
bermen as well. I used to linger about the 
country stores and listen to the shrewd and 
often witty country talk, and I delighted 
in hearing of the ships which came to port, 
and in seeing the sea-tanned captains, who 
sometimes dined with my grandfather and 
talked of their voyages and bargains at the 
Barbadoes and Havana. And so I came 
to know directly a good deal about a 
fashion of life which is now almost entirely 
a thing of the past in New England." 

" Art, you know," she said to the same 
man, as they sat discussing her Yankee 
and Irish-American sketches, " always be- 
gins with a recognition of the grotesque and 
unusual in life — the mere superficial as- 
pects of character and habit. All literature 
in the beginning is in relation to the lower 
forms of pictorial art — it views life from 
the pictorial side almost exclusively. As 

57 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

art goes higher it recognizes facts, and then 
the pathetic in the ludicrous. The dis- 
tinction of modern literature is the evoca- 
tion of sympathy. . . . Plato said : ' The 
best thing that can be done for the people 
of a state is to make them acquainted with 
each other ' ; and that is what I conceive to 
be the business of a story writer." 

Miss Jewett is rather tall and perfectly 
dignified, but her dignity is warmed by her 
uncommon graciousness and by the charm- 
ing brightness of her face. As her father 
had, surely she also has this true French 
gaiete de cceur. It should by this time be 
hardly necessary to say that flashes of wit 
and wisdom characterize her conversation, 
and that, in short, she is one of the rarest 
ornaments of the most cultured circle of 
Boston society. 



58 




MRS. BURTON HARRISON. 



MRS. BURTON HARRISON 



^NYONE who has visited Virginia, 
/-I and is at all intimate with its coun- 
try life, can easily understand how 
the mind of a highly imaginative child 
would there be stimulated to the creation 
of fairy stories, by reasons as natural and 
instinctive as those which foster that early 
love for dolls of wood, of paper, or of plas- 
ter. Such was the beginning of Mrs. Burton 
Harrison's literary career, and these child- 
ish efforts were but the nucleus of other 
stories yet to come: stories which were 
to treat of more worldly individuals than 
fairies, but were to retain the freshness and 
charm of those earlier attempts, which 
would make them ever pleasing to a large 
and enthusiastic audience of well-cultivated 

59 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

but critical Americans. The many beauti- 
ful and always gracious heroines of colonial 
Virginian life who are, at the present time, 
absorbing so much authorial ink, have, in- 
deed, a twentieth-century prototype in Mrs. 
Burton Harrison. An aristocrat in every 
instance, of temperament as romantic as 
one could wish, yet not, as is usually the 
case, with an accompanying overbalance of 
unpractically ; with self-possession worthy 
of another century, when graciousness of 
manner was more fully cultivated than now, 
she possesses a combination of character- 
istics which are well divided against them- 
selves, and which permeate her work with 
a peculiar flavor of artistic excellence. She 
is of medium height and of well-rounded 
figure. Her hair, of auburn, just escaping 
red, is tinged with gray. Her eyes are 
grayish blue, and not remarkable. Her 
features, though fairly regular, have no 
60 



MRS. BURTON HARRISON 

particular claim to beauty. In fact, so lit- 
tle distinction is there in her personal ap- 
pearance that the passer-by would not look 
a second time at the middle-aged woman in 
the simple attire, yet such is her mingled 
grace and charm of manner that to see and 
know is but to admire with ever-increasing 
appreciation. 

As Constance Cary of Virginia she came 
of historic Anglo-Saxon blood, and passed 
her childhood in that distinctly romantic 
atmosphere of semi-feudalism which was 
typical of Virginian life before the war. 
Her colonial ancestor upon her father's 
side, Colonel Miles Cary, was a scion of the 
Carys of Devonshire, England, whose 
tombs are yet to be seen at the church at 
Clovelly, and whose present head is the 
Viscount Falkland. Emigrating to Amer- 
ica, he settled in Virginia about the middle 
of the seventeenth century, and later became 

61 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

a man of considerable prominence, for during 
the vigorous rule of Sir William Berkeley 
he was a member of the king's council. 
Her father was Archibald Cary, of Carys- 
brook, in Virginia, and the son of Virginia 
Randolph, the ward and pupil of Thomas 
Jefferson, and sister of his son-in-law, 
Thomas Mann Randolph. Visitors to 
Monticello are still shown the spot where 
Jefferson stood in giving his ward in mar- 
riage to his own nephew. Her mother was 
the youngest daughter of Thomas Fairfax, 
Baron of Cameron in the Scottish peerage, 
who resided upon a large plantation at 
Vaucluse, in Fairfax, Virginia, and there 
lived a retired and gentlemanly life. From 
her grandmother upon the father's side, 
Mrs. Wilson Jefferson Cary, a well-known 
and popular writer in her day, she may be 
said to have inherited her literary talent, 
although the Fairfax family was noted for 
62 



MRS. BURTON HARRISON 

its appreciation of good literature. As a 
writer her father possessed considerable 
originality and force, and the influence of 
his great-uncle, Thomas Jefferson, the foun- 
der of American Democracy, is distinctly 
discernible in his political essays. Unfor- 
tunately he died while comparatively a 
young man, and his wife and small children 
lived in the seclusion of the family estate, 
not far from Arlington, where Constance 
Cary spent a happy childhood and youth, 
educated by her loving mother and a French 
governess, and delving with great constancy 
into the full-stocked family library of old, 
but well-chosen books. 

When she was seventeen, her first story 
— a love story, of course — was sent to the 
Atlantic Monthly. It was lurid and mel- 
ancholy, and was returned in due course of 
time with, " This is far better than the aver- 
age, and should be read through," written 

63 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

in very bright ink, and with a very large 
hand, across the first page. From this 
she inferred that only the first page had 
been read, and, strange as it may seem, 
even that gave her encouragement. Her 
next attempt was a highly-colored and sen- 
sational novel called " Skirmishing," which 
was destroyed in a fire, an event for which she 
has since had every reason to feel grateful. 
The Civil War now temporarily ended 
her literary career, for the family left Vau- 
cluse at the approach of the hostile armies, 
and passed through the Confederate lines at 
Manassas to friends and acquaintances upon 
the Southern side. Shortly afterwards their 
hospitable home was destroyed by the gov- 
ernment engineers, during the construction 
of the chain of fortifications around Wash- 
ington City, which were thrown up under 
the direction of General McClellan. The 
effect of this loss of home, coupled with the 
64 



MRS. BURTON HARRISON 

other misfortunes which crowded upon 
Constance Cary at this period of her life, left 
a deep impression upon her sensitive nature. 
A shade of bitterness fostered by these 
events may be traced in some of her writ- 
ings, most noticeably, perhaps, in " Flower 
de Hundred " and " Crow's Nest." But a 
long trip abroad with her widowed mother, 
and several years spent in European travel, 
not only made her forget in part the sor- 
rows of the past, but furthered an educa- 
tion which was already of unusual com- 
pleteness. 

Soon after her return, Miss Cary was 
married to Burton Harrison, Esq., a promi- 
nent member of the New York bar, and, 
like his wife, also of an ancient and well- 
known Virginian family. The ceremony 
was performed at the picturesque St. Anne's 
Church, in Westchester County, New 
York, and the wedding breakfast was at 

65 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

" Old Morrisana," the country home of her 
uncle, Gouverneur Morris. 

" It was not until my return to Amer- 
ica," she has said, "that I was bold enough 
to take up my pen. I wrote a little article, 
which I called ' A Little Centennial Lady.' 
It was published in Scribner's Magazine, and 
had so favorable a reception that I was 
encouraged to write ' Golden Rod,' a story 
of Mount Desert, which appeared in Har- 
per's Magazine." These were quite widely 
read, and were soon followed by other 
efforts. Two spheres of life she felt well 
qualified to represent, and these only she 
has touched upon with success, although her 
latest novel has been of a distinctly differ- 
ent type. The South of her girlhood, which 
she knew so intimately, she has depicted 
with the true sympathy of the Southern 
born, while the whims and fallacies of that 
metropolitan society where Mammon wor- 
66 



MRS. BURTON HARRISON 

ship is paramount, and mad scramble after 
place and leadership is all-absorbing, she 
has shown with a delicate appreciation that 
is unequalled. Of her own work, she has 
said : " My books I have enjoyed most, if 
a writer may enjoy her own work, have not 
been those dealing with New York social 
life, but my tales of the South. Charles 
A. Dana, of the New York Sun, was uncon- 
sciously responsible for my « Old Domin- 
ion.' He gave me the agreeable task of 
editing the ' Monticello Letters,' and from 
them I gleaned a story which outlined my 
* Old Dominion.' But the editors cry for 
stories of New York social life, to gratify 
the popular demand." And is it not human 
nature that the public should thus raise its 
voice ? What interests the dweller in the 
tenth small cottage to the left of the gro- 
cery store in the New England village more 
than what the dweller in the second house 

67 



LITTLE PILGKIMAGES 

to the right of that same grocery is doing ? 
Stories of a swell club, women's teas, and 
love's broken lances among the million- 
dollar endowed, serve but to satisfy the 
curiosity of those who live upon a higher 
social (not necessarily moral) plane than 
that of the country town. They cry for 
news of each other, and Mrs. Harrison has 
ably satisfied this want. " Her muse is not 
a winged Pegasus. It is a park cob," a 
clever New York reviewer has said, but 
Mrs. Harrison would have us think other- 
wise. " I am sorry I am so identified with 
society in the minds of readers. I would 
like to be thought of as a student of human, 
rather than of society, nature. It is cir- 
cumstances that have made my outlook 
upon life what it is. I have an intense 
sympathy for the joys and sorrows of hu- 
manity, and the older I grow the more 
sorrows appeal to me. I see them in the 
68 



MRS. BURTON HARRISON 

lives of my friends and write about them. 
The friends happen to be in society, so I 
am known as the society novelist or sat- 
irist." 

There are two homes which are graced 
by the presence of this successful novelist, 
who is as competent a housekeeper as she 
is a brilliant member of society. The Har- 
rison's winter house is a charming but un- 
pretentious mansion on East Twenty-Ninth 
street, New York, the city of many more 
palatial, but few more attractive residences. 
" Sea Urchins " their summer cottage is at 
Bar Harbor, and is most picturesquely situ- 
ated upon a high bit of ground near the 
sea. This, perhaps, is her favorite work- 
ing place, and although she is a great 
traveller, and has been to nearly all the 
noted places in foreign lands, and to many 
which are seldom visited by the casual and 
unliterary tourist, yet she has confessed 

69 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES. 

that her happiest hours are spent in the 
bracing atmosphere which surrounds this 
northern dwelling. 

Her first story of New York life, " Helen 
Troy," in 1881, was a tale of the society of 
her native town, and of the Berkshire Hills. 
"The Old-Fashioned Fairy Book," pub- 
lished in 1884, and " Bric-a-Brac Stories," 
one year later, gave her an enviable repu- 
tation as a writer for children, for they are 
as much read to-day as when first produced. 

" Short Comedies for American Players," 
a translation and adaptation of several ex- 
cellent plays of French authorship, was a 
departure from her usual field, but a suc- 
cessful one. Under her personal direction 
these plays were produced in both Lenox 
and New York, and netted an aggregate of 
about twenty thousand dollars for the dif- 
ferent charities in whose behalf they were 
given. Next followed a number of histori- 
70 



MRS. BURTON HARRISON 

cal papers upon colonial America. " The 
Fairfaxes in America," an article read be- 
fore the New York Historical Society, June 
2, 1888, was a truthful and vigorous his- 
torical essay of unusual attraction, on 
account of the grace of its artistic work- 
manship. A sketch of the life of " Colonel 
William Byrd of Westover," appeared some 
two years later and was equally well re- 
ceived. 

In 1889, "The Anglomaniacs," caused a 
great stir in society. " It did not cause 
any personal stirring," she has said, " for 
all agreed that the Anglo-worshippers were 
not overdrawn. People criticized, but they 
never caught themselves in the act of 
Anglo-worshipping. They say'their neigh- 
bors pay homage to the fetich and said, « I 
believe these foolish people inspired Mrs. 
Harrison's work.' Oh, yes, I am quite 
safe and quite comfortable, I assure you. 

71 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

My feet are planted on that basic rule of 
human nature, 4 Discover the beam in your 
neighbor's eye, and don't look for the mote 
in your own.* Had that rule been re- 
versed, I might have had some unhappy 
luncheon, tea, or reception memories, but 
after a quarter of a century of writing 
about society people and seeing that they 
will not discover themselves, I feel secure 
and impregnable in my fortress of criticism. 
My characters were taken from life, yes, 
indeed, but they are copied of types rather 
than individuals. That may be one of the 
reasons that I have not been persecuted by 
an angry original. Types, after all, are 
composites." 

" Flower de Hundred," her next work, 
was set in Southern surroundings and was 
successful, although not to such an extent 
as the one preceding. " A Daughter of 
the South," which next appeared, was a 
72 



MRS. BURTON HARRISON 

collection of her short stories, some of which 
had been published in magazine form. 
"Sweet Bells out of Tune," was followed 
by "A Bachelor Maid," which was con- 
densed for Russian readers in a leading 
Russian magazine. " An Errant Wooing" 
was an interesting love story, and in this 
her knowledge of foreign life was well 
utilized. " The Merry Maid of Arcady," 
was followed by " Crow's Nest," which 
has brought the author more letters from 
all parts of the country, than any of her 
books, One was from a Western ranch- 
man, and said : " Your book has gone the 
rounds, but it has always come back, and I 
have threatened to put a bullet in the hide 
of the man who does not return it." With 
this letter the author was greatly pleased. 
" The Circle of a Century " and " A Prin- 
cess of the Hills " are two of her later books 
which have received very favorable comment, 

73 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

although the latter is a complete departure 
from her ordinary scenes of action, and is a 
story of Italian life, and of a foreign environ- 
ment which she has good reason to know 
with accuracy. Such a long list of publica- 
tions bears full witness to the energy which 
has characterized her life. " I was made 
for action," she has said, "I cannot relax 
as so many do. I haven't the temperament 
and besides, there is so much to do. I 
would be unable to write did I not thor- 
oughly believe in my characters. I am 
always living and observing a dozen lives. 
There is much satisfaction in doing work 
correctly. I am in love with mine, and am 
a hard worker. I would like to write some- 
thing that every one would read, something 
powerful." Perhaps she may, such persis- 
tence and patient toil are worthy of ac- 
complishing the desired end. 



74 




v&z 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK. 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK 
(MISS MURFREE) 



>^vN March 4, 1885, the Boston 
f M Evening Transcript printed the 
following paragraph : 
" Last evening Dr. Holmes and Mr. 
Howells received a genuine surprise at the 
hands of the editor of the Atlantic. Mr. 
Aldrich invited these gentlemen to dine 
with him, to meet Charles Egbert Crad- 
dock, the author of « In the Tennessee 
Mountains,' * Where the Battle was Fought,' 
and the remarkable novel now publishing 
in the Atlantic (" The Prophet of the Great 
Smoky Mountains "). The surprise lay in 
the fact that Charles Egbert Craddock is a 
pseudonym which for the past six years has 
veiled the identity of a very brilliant woman 
— Miss Mary N. Murfree of St. Louis." 

75 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

Thus the curtain was rung down on one 
of the neatest comedies ever presented to 
the American reading public. And what 
a distinguished cast the comedy had ! 

It was in May, 1878, during the admin- 
istration of Mr. Howells, that the readers 
of the Atlantic were treated to a most de- 
lightful, a most refreshing surprise, a story 
of the Tennessee Mountains, called " The 
Dancin' Party at Harrison's Cove," by a 
new author, Charles Egbert Craddock. 

The quaint and unprecedented strain 
was noticeable in the first colloquial sen- 
tence : 

" « Fur ye see, Mis' Darley, them Harri- 
son folks over yander ter the cove hev' de- 
terminated on a dancin' party.' ' : 

Mr. Howells was pleased with his dis- 
covery ; the Atlantic readers — then the 
most critical literary company in America 
— hailed the coming of a promising author ; 
76 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK 

the professional critics hesitated at first 
and then echoed the popular applause. 

Time passed, and Mr. Aldrich took Mr. 
Howells's chair in the Atlantic office, and 
one of the first official acts of the new edi- 
tor was to write to Charles Egbert Crad- 
dock inviting more contributions. Then, 
pending an answer, he ordered in two 
Craddock stories that had been left over 
by reason of a superabundance of some- 
what more important material. 

The response to his invitation came in 
the shape of a series of as excellent Amer- 
ican stories as ever was published — " The 
Star in the Valley," " The Romance of 
Sunrise Rock," " Over on the T'other 
Mounting," « The Harnt that Walks Chil- 
howee," " Electioneering on Big Injun 
Mounting," " A-Playin' of Old Sledge at 
Settlemint," and the exceptionally long 
and powerful " Drifting Down Lost 

77 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

Creek," which ran through three numbers 
of the Atlantic. Later there appeared a 
novel, " Where the Battle was Fought," 
a work hardly worthy of its predecessors. 
In time the name of Charles Egbert Crad- 
dock was signed to three books : the novel 
just mentioned, a collection of short stories 
("In the Tennessee Mountains"), and to 
" Down the Ravine," a tale for the young 
folks, in whom the author then took a lively 
interest. All in all, they were profoundly in- 
teresting stories, revealing a deep insight 
into the manners of the pent-up, ignorant, 
law-flaunting, hard-headed, and pure-hearted 
mountaineers. Palacio Valdes calls attention 
to that " beautiful spectacle " — a virginal 
man of eighty. John Fox, Jr., who has been 
walking in the footsteps of the author of 
" In the Tennessee Mountains," once said 
to us that he had met Southern mountain- 
eers who, at thirty, were as chaste as angels. 
78 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK 

But aside from the virility of the Crad- 
dock sketches, there were more substantial 
marks of the author's masculine sex. 
There was legal acumen, for instance, 
which led to the assumption that Craddock 
was a lawyer who turned to literature for 
recreation. And there was the bold, manly 
handwriting — inky handwriting — a bot- 
tle of ink to a page. So inky, indeed, 
that when Mr. Aldrich thought of asking 
the Southerner for a serial (" The Prophet 
of the Great Smoky Mountains ") he re- 
marked, " I wonder if Craddock has laid 
in his winter's ink yet; perhaps I can get 
a serial out of him." 

It was already known on Park street, 
where the old-fashioned headquarters of the 
Atlantic Monthly are to be seen to-day, that 
Charles Egbert Craddock was the psuedo- 
nym of M. N. Murfree. " Ah ! so his name 
is Murfree ! " they were exclaiming. 

79 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

Monday, March 2, 1885, brought three 
guests from St. Louis to Hotel Vendome, 
in Boston ; and there they were registered 
as "W. L. Murfree, Sr." and "The Misses 
Murfree." But the literary world was still 
in a state of blissful ignorance. 

" Last Monday morning (we quote from 
a contemporaneous account of the incident), 
as Mr. Aldrich was in the editorial room of 
the Atlantic Monthly, word was brought to 
him that a lady below wished to see him. 
He went down and met a pleasant young 
lady, who remarked that she was Charles 
Egbert Craddock. Mr. Aldrich could 
hardly have been more astounded had the 
roof fallen in, and he turned and ran several 
steps under the pressure of the shock, be- 
fore he recovered his usually imperturbable 
presence of mind. He would have been 
better prepared to find under that name a 
strapping six-foot Tennesseean than the del- 
80 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK 

icate looking lady before him. He now 
says he is inclined to doubt the sex of all 
the other Atlantic's contributors whom he 
has not met. There are certain things in 
George Eliot's writings which, now that one 
knows, one can clearly see could have been 
written only by a woman ; but in the writings 
of Charles Egbert Craddock there is not 
the slightest trace of feminine influence. 
Dr. Holmes and Mr. Howells were equally 
astonished at meeting Mr. Craddock in Miss 
Murfree. Mr. Howells had written that he 
could not come, owing to another engage- 
ment, though he wished very much to ' meet 
Craddock,' but he was persuaded to come 
by Mr. Aldrich. On his way he called at 
a prominent publisher's, who said : ' Tell 
Craddock to drop around and see us.' It 
will hardly be a violation of privacy to say 
that the evening was a delightful one to all ; 
that the chief guest was addressed as ' they ' 

81 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

by the host in recognition of the quality of 
Miss Murfree and Charles Egbert Crad- 
dock, while the hostess could not lose the 
latter name from mind, and compromised 
with < Miss Craddock.' " 

It is reasonable to inquire why the inno- 
cent deception was practiced for so long a 
time. The author's brother, William L. 
Murfree, Jr., once partly illuminated the 
matter. He said : " Mr. Aldrich and her 
publishers knew that Craddock was an as- 
sumed name, but never doubted that M. N. 
Murfree was a man. The nom de plume, 
her style of writing, and chirography, all 
contributed to this impression. The name 
was assumed as well for a cloak in case of 
failure as to secure the advantage that a 
man has in literature over a woman. He 
obtains a quicker reading by the publishers, 
is better received by the public in the be- 
ginning, and altogether has an easier time 
82 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK 

of it. Accident led to the choice of the 
name, which had been much discussed in the 
family before being finally determined upon 
by her in the form used. Those portions 
of her writings which are called peculiarly 
masculine are not in any sense affectations. 
It was never doubted she was a man, and 
hence there was no reason for the adoption 
of disguise in writing. Each portion of her 
work was read to the family before being 
sent away, and, it may be, sometimes criti- 
cized as to some detail ; she is too positive 
and painstaking to need or allow much in- 
terference in the plan or arrangement of 
her material." 

Inexperience is the only excuse for the 
idea that prejudice against women exists 
among either the publishers or the people 
who read and love books. The proofs in 
opposition to this idea, especially in these 
days, are too numerous to present. 

83 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

The pseudonym came to be chosen in 
this way : Egbert Craddock was the name 
of the hero of Miss Murfree's second story, 
which was only partly written when the 
time came to send the manuscript of the 
first story to the publishers. In doubt 
regarding what pen-name to adopt, Miss 
Murfree took the name of her new hero 
and prefixed Charles to it, just to give 
it the appearance of verisimilitude. All in 
all, it was a very happy choice — an in- 
spired choice. 

Mary Noailles Murfree was born at 
" Grantlands," near Murfreesboro, Tenn., 
in 1850. " Grantlands " was the family 
home, inherited from her great-grandfather, 
Col. Hardy Murfree, a gallant soldier of 
the Revolution, who, in 1807, moved from 
his native State of North Carolina to 
the new State of Tennessee, where he 
settled near the town that later was given 
84 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK 

his name. Miss Murfree's father, William 
Law Murfree, was a lawyer by profession ; 
her mother, was Priscilla, the daughter of 
Judge Dickinson. The names of both her 
father and her brother have a place in 
American literature. Mary exhibited " lite- 
rary aspirations " even when, as a little girl, 
she went to school in Nashville ; later she 
and her sister, Fannie, went to school in 
Philadelphia. 

The Murfrees were hard hit by the War 
of the Rebellion ; and their distress was 
emphasized by Mary's poor health. But 
the young woman showed a dauntless 
spirit. Quietly observant, keenly imag- 
inative, and strongly inclined to write, 
she began to set down her impressions of 
the life about her, notably the life in the 
Tennessee mountains, where the family 
usually spent the summer. With what 
successful, — admirable results, the lovers 

85 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

of American literature know full well. In 
1881 the family moved to St. Louis ; but 
Miss Murf ree's present address is her native 
town in Tennessee. 

She could not fairly be characterized as 
a dialect writer ; her narration is generally 
excellent ; and her power of description is 
especially praiseworthy. Note, for ex- 
ample, the life and the grace in the first 
lines of " The < Harnt ' that Walks Chil- 
howee " : 

" The breeze freshened, after the sun 
went down, and the hop and gourd vines 
were all astir as they clung about the little 
porch where Clarsie was sitting now, idle 
at last. The rain-clouds had disappeared, 
and there bent over the dark, heavily 
wooded ridges a pale blue sky, with here 
and there the crystalline sparkle of a star. 
A halo was shimmering in the east, where 
the mists had gathered about the great 
86 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK 

white moon, hanging high above the moun- 
tains. Noiseless wings flitted through the 
dusk ; now and then the bats swept by so 
close as to move Clarsie's hair with the 
wind of their flight. What an airy, glitter- 
ing, magical thing was that gigantic spider- 
web suspended between the silver moon 
and her shining eyes ! Ever and anon 
there came from the woods a strange, 
weird, long-drawn sigh, unlike the stir of 
the wind in the trees, unlike the fret of 
the water on the rocks. Was it the voice- 
less sorrow of the sad earth ? There were 
stars in the night besides those known to 
astronomers: the stellular fireflies gemmed 
the black shadows with a fluctuating bril- 
liancy; they circled in and out of the 
porch, and touched the leaves above 
Clarsie's head with quivering points of 
light. A steadier and an intenser gleam 
was advancing along the road, and the 

87 



LITTLE PILGEIMAGES 

sound of languid footsteps came with it ; 
the aroma of tobacco graced the atmos- 
phere, and a tall figure walked up to the 
gate." 

Note — above the engaging swing of the 
words — the masculine touch, " the aroma 
of tobacco graced the atmosphere." Surely 
Mr. Aldrich and his associates, not to men- 
tion the readers of the Atlantic, were justi- 
fied in thinking of " Mr. Craddock." And 
in the same story you will find another 
remarkably vivid picture, not large and 
overwhelming — that is not the author's 
style ; but small and delicate, with all 
the scenery of a photograph but even a 
more impressive appearance of reality — 
the picture of Clarsie sitting at the win- 
dow in the moonlight. 

Miss Murfree's brother is our authority 
for the statement that " Her pictures of 
people are of types, not individuals ; and 
88 



CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK 

where it is thought an individual has been 
drawn, it is because that person possesses, 
in a large degree ; the peculiarities of his 
class." The vital fact, however, is the 
author's success in portraiture ; her skill in 
infusing vitality into her picturesque char- 
acters ; her artistic employment of a cul- 
tivated imaginative temperament. Her 
natural gifts quite suit her choice of sub- 
jects, it might be said, superficially ; but 
beneath the surface of her success is to be 
seen the artistry that adorns all subjects. 
She is an artist, as we would say of Miss 
Jewett or Miss Wilkins. Like them, she 
would successfully hold the mirror up to 
nature, — anywhere. 

Personally, she is of medium height and 
slight form. Her features are prominent 
in a square and projecting forehead, large 
gray eyes, a deep-set Grecian nose, large 
mouth, and a chin that may be described 

89 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

as accounting for her positiveness. On 
the whole, a pleasant, magnetic, impressive 
face. She converses vivaciously, and her 
friends say she is a captivating story- 
teller. 

Her work is a valuable as well as enter- 
taining contribution to American literature. 
Indeed, she has covered her field so well 
that any hope of improving upon her stand- 
ard, or even of emulating it as laudably, 
is almost futile. 



90 




ANNA KATHARINE GREEN. 



ANNA KATHARINE GREEN 
(MRS. ROHLFS) 



/"T is related that when " The Leav- 
enworth Case " was published in 
1878, the Pennsylvania Legislature 
turned from politics to discuss the identity 
of its author. There was the name on the 
title-page — Anna Katharine Green — as 
distinct as the city of Harrisburgh itself. 
But it must be a nom de phime, some pro- 
tested. A man wrote the story — maybe 
a man already famous — and signed a 
woman's name to it. The story was man- 
ifestly beyond a woman's powers. Femi- 
nine names were considerably scarcer in 
the American fiction list then than they 
are to-day, when girls fresh from the high 
school take a place among the authors of 
the " best-selling " books. 

91 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

A New York lawyer happened to be 
present at the politicians' discussion. 
"You are mistaken," he said to the in- 
credulous. "I have seen the author of 
' The Leavenworth Case ' and conversed 
with her, and her name is really Miss 
Green." " 

" Then she must have got some man to 
help her," retorted the more obstinate the- 
orists. They strongly remind us of the 
characters whom Miss Green — as we 
shall call her for the moment — portrays 
so skillfully, the self-willed characters that 
aim so well, but do not hit even the tar- 
get, not to mention the bull's-eye. 

The incredulity exemplified by the 
Pennsylvanians was natural enough. That 
an American woman in those days should 
venture into the field of romantic litera- 
ture was so uncommon as to be note- 
worthy ; but that an American woman 
92 



ANNA KATHARINE GREEN 

should write detective stories — well, that 
was quite preposterous. 

And yet, nowadays, it would seem no 
more preposterous than a request to Mr. 
Carnegie to build a library. For the love 
of a good detective story, of a story inter- 
woven with adventure and mystery, is in 
most persons a simple manifestation of 
the instinctive love of excitement. We 
know a professor — one of the most bril- 
liant men in his profession — who has 
never lost his juvenile fondness for the 
pursuit of fire-engines. Similarly, many 
men and women are never cured of their 
youthful passion for the literature of the 
disguises and the handcuffs. Hawkshaw ! 
How the name thrills even to-day ! It 
takes many a man back to the days when 
the tattered dime-novel was smuggled into 
the schoolroom. Sometimes the almost 
breathless attention to syntax or the map 

93 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

of the New England States betrayed the 
guilt ; but we firmly believe that there 
were teachers who never confiscated those 
prizes. 

But, measuring by the incessant changes 
in times and in manners, it is not difficult 
to understand that a quarter of a century 
ago the still conservative reading public 
was loth to believe that the author of 
" The Leavenworth Case " was a woman. 

Anna Katharine Green, the woman in 
question, was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., on 
Nov. 11, 1846. She was thirty-two, there- 
fore, it will be seen, when the story that 
made her famous was published. Her 
father was a well-known lawyer; indeed, 
the Greens, we have been told, were a 
family of lawyers. This may account for 
the skill with which the daughter has tied 
and cut Gordian knots. It unquestion- 
ably accounts for her nimble imagination, 
94 



ANNA KATHARINE GREEN 

her skill in producing subtle hypotheses 
and her strength in handling the most in- 
tricate psychological problems. In 1867 
Anna was graduated from the Ripley 
Female College, in Poultney, Vt., and she 
may, if she please, write B.A. after her 
name. She composed verses and stories 
at the age of eleven. And speaking of 
verses, how many readers are acquainted 
with the fact that the author of "The 
Leavenworth Case " is also the author of 
a drama in blank verse and of a volume 
of ballads and narrative poems? Yet 
" The Defence of the Bride, and Other 
Poems " has won encomiums from discreet 
critics : and in some respects " Risifi's 
Daughter: A Drama," is her most ambi- 
tious work. 

Perhaps, therefore, as we are to consider 
her poetry as an incidental, it may not be 
amiss at this point to quote a few charac- 

95 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

teristic verses. The two stanzas which 
follow are taken from a poem entitled " At 
the Piano " : 

Play on ! Play on ! As softly glides 

The low refrain, I seem, I seem, 
To float, to float on golden tides, 

By sunlit isles, where life and dream 
Are one, are one ; and hope and bliss 
Move hand in hand, and thrilling, kiss 
'Neath bowery blooms 
In twilight glooms, 
And love is life, and life is love. 

Play on ! Play on ! As higher rise 

The lifted strains, I seem, I seem 
To mount, to mount through roseate skies, 
Through drifted cloud and golden gleam, 
To realms, to realms of thought and fire, 
Where angels walk and souls aspire, 
And sorrow comes but as the night 
That brings a star for our delight. 

Some of the criticisms of the book — " The 
Defence of the Bride, and Other Poems " 
— were extremely, and, indeed, rather 
96 



ANNA KATHARINE GREEN 

absurdly flattering ; a moderately toned 
opinion was given in Harper s Monthly : 

" The ballads and narrative poems which 
form the greater part of this collection 
are vigorous productions, whose barren- 
ness of redundant words and epithets, and 
whose directness and straightforwardness 
of narration, are in strong contrast with 
the diffuse garrulity of most female writers. 
She has the true storyteller's faculty for 
investing what she has to say with inter- 
est, and for keeping expectation on the 
stretch; and she delivers her message 
with masculine force and brevity." 

One of the critics, by the way, com- 
pared Miss Green — she was still Miss 
Green then, in 1882 — with Alfred Austin. 
"Miss Green," says the critic, " seems to 
be able to say delicate and graceful things 
as easily as does the English poet." That 
was before Mr. Austin became Poet Lau- 

97 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

reate — before comparisons with him were 
particularly odious. 

" Risifi's Daughter," we may say, in a 
word, is notable rather for its well-sus- 
tained dramatic strength than for any es- 
pecial skill or grace of versification. It 
seems to have convinced its author that 
her lines might be cast in happier places. 

But to return to the main road. We 
have already seen that as a girl Anna had 
literary aspirations, but they reached no 
serious stage of development until after 
her return from Ripley College. She felt 
drawn to literature, and yet she was in no 
hurry either to decide which of the divers 
literary fields was best suited to her taste 
and talent, or to see her name in print. 
At this critical time her father was friend 
and counsellor. He perceived that there 
was no fickleness back of his daughter's 
ambition to adopt literature as a profes- 



ANNA KATHARINE GREEN 

sion ; and, what is more important, he 
perceived that she might successfully 
qualify as a candidate. So he set about 
to direct and to encourage her zeal. 

He found Anna a docile pupil. When 
doubts arose, when discouragement ap- 
peared, he was nearby to cheer her and to 
advise. He enlisted her sympathy in differ- 
ent cases that interested him ; he sharpened 
her wits ; he discoursed to her on his own in- 
teresting experiences ; he contributed ju- 
dicious criticisms ; above all, he fostered her 
confidence in her own powers. In this way 
she acquired from her father gifts that she 
had not inherited from him. Hers was a 
remarkably well-equipped intellect before 
one of her books had been published. 

" The Leavenworth Case " came to 
startle the reading public in 1878. The 
plot of the story had been in the author's 
mind for some years. The book, there- 

L.fC. " 



LITTLE PILGRIM AGES 

fore, was no inspired or spasmodic effort ; 
rather it was the product of a finely regu- 
lated intellect applied to the ever-enter- 
taining theories of cause and effect. 
What if those legislators had been in- 
formed of the fact that the author was a 
student of criminology ! 

Mrs. Rohlfs is too adept a psychologist 
to pretend that instinct led her with the 
manuscript of " The Leavenworth Case " 
to Mr. G. P. Putnam's office ; it was more 
likely a simple piece of good fortune to 
happen upon so wise and liberal an ap- 
praiser. It is a tribute to his perspicacity 
that he introduced to the American reading 
public one of its most popular writers, and 
it is a happy commentary on the relation- 
ship between author and publisher that, 
with an exception or two, the Putnam 
house has issued the periodical output of 
Anna Katharine Green. 
100 



ANNA KATHARINE GREEN 

When " A Strange Disappearance " ap- 
peared, in 1885, a critic — or perhaps we 
should say reviewer — made the comment : 
" We have a Gaboriau in our own tongue." 
It must have seemed extremely flattering 
— assuming that the author of " A Strange 
Disappearance " is normally susceptible to 
flattery — to be named favorably in the 
same sentence with the brilliant French- 
man. Mrs. Rohlfs resembles Gaboriau in 
so far as her strong point, as his was, is 
the simple and perspicuous narrative of 
events; thus, too, she resembles Wilkie 
Collins, who was called an imitator of 
Gaboriau. But we doubt that any pen 
excepting Gaboriau's could write or could 
have written the first part of " Monsieur 
Lecocq." Possibly the English writer 
thought he saw an imitator in the author 
of " The Leavenworth Case." At any rate, 
while she was enjoying the first fruits of 

101 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

renown, Collins wrote to her publishers 
that he sincerely admired her stories ; and 
we understand that he conveyed to the 
young American some "wise practical 
hints " and "warm expressions of belief in 
her future." The belief has been abun- 
dantly justified. 

" It is said " — we quote from an anony- 
mous paper dealing with the career of the 
New York author — " that she does not 
herself claim to be a novelist. She is not 
a novelist in the sense that George Eliot 
and Hawthorne are novelists." These words 
remind us of the reflections of Mr. Herbert 
Paul, the brilliant English essayist, on 
Collins's " Woman in White " and " Moon- 
stone." "Are these books and others like 
them literature ? " he asks. " Wilkie Col- 
lins deliberately stripped his style of all 
embellishment. Even epithets are ex- 
cluded, as they are from John Austin's 
102 



ANNA KATHARINE GREEN 

'Letters on Jurisprudence.' It is strange 
that a man of letters should try to make 
his books resemble police reports. But, if 
he does, he must take the consequences. 
He cannot serve God and Mammon." The 
reflections, to some extent, may be applied 
direct to Mrs. Rohlfs's books, for they, too, 
are stripped almost bare of epithets. But 
if, as Mr. Crawford, for example, urges, if 
the first purpose of a novel is entertain- 
ment, then the books bearing the name of 
Anna Katharine Green are excellent novels. 
But it is not a point to be insisted upon. Let 
the statement suffice that the books in ques- 
tion, whatever be their true denomination, 
give rare pleasure. Fastidious critics, like 
Professor Bates of Wellesley, may classify 
them as police-court literature ; but even 
in the police court is revealed the joy and 
the woe of human passions, the wonderful 
keenness and the terrible dullness of the 

103 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

human intellect. Mrs. Rohlfs knows her 
limitations, and is content to be exalted or 
condemned by her performances. 

Her manner of working takes us back 
to Charles Reade. " The account of any- 
remarkable or strange event that comes to 
her attention in the reading of the news- 
papers she cuts out and pastes into a scrap- 
book. . . When the time comes to write 
out the plots which she has previously de- 
veloped in her mind, she takes care to 
work only when she can work at her best. 
Sometimes she writes, therefore, two hours 
a day, sometimes ten ; but there is none 
of that plan of persistent plodding, day in 
and day out, to produce a prescribed 
amount, which Anthony Trollope carried 
on so successfully." Yet in the twenty- 
three years covering her literary career 
she has written a score of books. This 
has been no light task for one with a 
104 



ANNA KATHARINE GREEN 

household to take care of, for in Novem- 
ber, 1884, the novelist became Mrs. 
Charles Rohlfs. Some of the books have 
been translated into German and Swedish, 
which circumstance is a notable tribute to 
their attractiveness. 

Technically, Professor Bates was justi- 
fied in referring to Mrs. Rohlfs as a the 
foremost representative in America to-day 
of police-court literature " ; yet to us this 
reference seems unsatisfactory, inadequate. 
It conveys no hint of the constructive 
skill, the imaginative power and the per- 
ceptive faculties necessary for the praise- 
worthy writing of police-court literature ; 
and, furthermore, it offers no suggestion of 
Anna Katharine Green's exquisite sense 
of humor. How delightfully, for example, 
that most interesting spinster in " That 
Affair next Door " — Miss Butterworth, 
as we remember the name — plays hostess 

105 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

for the Van Burnam girls ! What a gen- 
uine piece of comedy amid the pathos and 
terror roundabout ! And how much flesh 
and blood there is in many of these unpre- 
tentious tales of mystery. One may not 
approve that sort of literature, or take 
any pleasure in it, but it is not to be de- 
nied that Mrs. Rohlfs writes artistically. 
Art concerns the work, not the subject. 

We venture the prediction that the 
stories written by Anna Katharine Green, 
by virtue not only of their attractive skill- 
fulness but also of their perennially inter- 
esting subjects, will be read eagerly and 
with delight when many of the novels of 
brighter present fame have accumulated 
dust. 



106 




MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL. 



MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL 



jr Y~ 7" HEN Rudyard Kipling issued 
1/1/ a story with strange characters 
before it, people wondered. They 
wondered still more when they discov- 
ered that in ".007", the reportorial hand 
of the master exhibited a knowledge of 
steam engines that was as technically cor- 
rect as that of the man who designed them. 
When seamen read the sea tales of Molly 
Elliot Seawell, they were in the same men- 
tal condition as the engineer who read 
the article with the hieroglyphic heading : 
they marvelled. 

It was not the technical knowledge of 
vessels and the navy alone that made Miss 
Seawell's stories so fascinating. With that 
they combined a delicate and romantic 

107 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

touch that was unusual, for, with the every- 
day story of the sea, there is often a certain 
roughness that destroys the pleasure of 
a sensitive reader. For this reason one 
prominent American author has few ad- 
mirers among the gentler sex. 

An uncle of Molly Elliot Seawell had 
been in the United States Navy before the 
Civil War. After the commencement of 
hostilities he had resigned to follow the 
Confederate arms, and had served with dis- 
tinction throughout the four years of open 
hostilities. From him she heard in child- 
hood true and glowing accounts of what is 
known as the romantic period of the Amer- 
ican Navy, the period when ships still car- 
ried a great spread of canvas, when cruises 
meant long absences of years from home, 
and a naval officer was called upon to meet 
tremendous emergencies now provided for 
by the cable and the telegraph. This is 
108 



MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL 

what stimulated her to write of Decatur and 
Somers, of Paul Jones, of midshipman 
Paulding, of Quarter-deck and Fo'c'sle, and 
of Little Jarvis ; and the technical knowl- 
edge she displayed, like everything she has 
done, was the result of hard and conscien- 
tious mental labor. 

In 1890 the Youth's Companion, which 
periodically gives some stimulus to good 
writing, held out a prize of five hundred 
dollars for the best written story for boys. 
Miss Seawell's "Little Jarvis" won the 
place of honor. It was the story of our 
navy and of our midshipmen, which has 
the same patriotic wholesomeness that is 
possessed by Edward Everett Hale's "Man 
Without a Country," and, as it has nearly 
as large a circulation to-day as when first 
published in book form, there is no doubt 
that it will have as Long and prosperous a 
career. 

109 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

Miss Sea well's literary life is a curious 
example of the Tesults of environment. 
Born in a quaint and long-established Vir- 
ginian community — Gloucester County — 
she was brought up in a distinct atmosphere 
of books and of good literature. Her father 
was a lawyer of note, and in the great ram- 
bling house — "The Shelter" — was a fine 
old-fashioned library. It included a collec- 
tion of the English classics and many trans- 
lations of eighteenth century books of 
French philosophy, which Thomas Jeffer- 
son when minister to France, had selected 
for her great-grandfather, Judge Tyler, one 
of the first Federal judges appointed under 
the present system, and for three terms gov- 
ernor of his State. He was a great reader 
and his love for books was transmitted to 
his descendants. 

As a child she went to school most 
irregularly, and had a short term at a f ash- 
110 



MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL 

ionable boarding school, where she declares 
she learned nothing but folly and irrever- 
ence. At home the morning hours which 
other children spent with arithmetic, geog- 
raphy, or science, she passed in making the 
intimate acquaintance of the library books. 
Here she met with Shakespeare, an ancient 
edition of his works with all of Johnson's, 
Steevens', and Malone's notes, which had 
been read by several generations of Seawells 
and showed it ; and here also with Volney, 
with Jean Jacques Rousseau and other phil- 
osophers, whom she approached when in her 
teens and could not well understand. Her 
father and mother forbade her to read 
novels, — for fear of her getting notions in- 
to her head, — but, while they were strongly 
denying her such wild delights as Khoda 
Broughton and Ouida might furnish, she 
was imbibing Byron and Shelley with the 
highest relish. By the time she was fifteen 

111 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

she knew all they could teach about the 
emotions, and when novels were allowed 
her, found them decidedly tame beside her 
already acquired knowledge of what they 
were all about. 

Her mother was devoted to reading from 
the beginning to the end of her life, and 
absorbed Shakespeare with a thoroughness 
that is seldom met with. Every two or 
three years she would begin deliberately at 
the first pages of "The Tempest" and read 
through to the last page of " Titus Andron- 
icus," and in the same way would read 
" Hume's History of England," Scott's nov- 
els, and many other standard works. She 
was also a systematic peruser of newspapers, 
and had better knowledge of public affairs 
than most people in public life. It thus can 
easily be seen how honestly the daughter 
came by her love of writing. She was un- 
consciously, but naturally, fitted for it as is 
112 



MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL 

the fisherman with many generations of sea- 
men behind him, and a home in Gloucester. 

Miss Seawell is herself an omniyerous 
reader. Thackeray, Macaulay, and Jane 
Austen have been her roast-beef and po- 
tatoes of artistic creation, although she is 
passionately fond of biographies. So fond 
indeed of Boswell's " Johnson" that one lit- 
erary acquaintance declares it to be the only 
book she had really read, because no matter 
what is the subject of conversation, she is 
certain to bring in a remark about the cele- 
brated author. 

Her home is with her sister in a charming 
house near Dupont Circle, or "Millionaires' 
Circle," in Washington, and overlooking the 
gardens of the Spanish legation. It is here 
that she does her literary work, and in very 
systematic fashion ; for she is of the opinion 
that the mind can be made to work auto- 
matically as well as the body, and we can 

113 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

command our powers more than we can 
believe. Every morning, at half-past nine, 
she retires to her own room and, while there, 
writes steadily until the luncheon hour. 
Books and ideas of books are now discarded 
until the following day. This work is dis- 
continued from the middle of June until 
the first of October, when she retires from 
home — as far away as she can get — and 
there imbibes fresh ideas for forthcoming 
romances, while taking a complete rest from 
literary endeavor. In spite of this habit of 
yearly travel abroad, she is a thoroughly 
patriotic American, and has frequently re- 
marked that nothing would induce her to 
leave her native country without a ticket 
for the return voyage. 

Upon every subject upon which she 
writes, she reads as much as possible, fol- 
lowing the example of Thackeray, who said 
that " The Virginians" was the resultant of 
114 



MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL 

a thousand books; and in her long journeys 
of investigation to places far from home 
she but imitates the method of the great 
Macaulay, who would sometimes travel a 
hundred miles to write a single line of de- 
scription. The scenes of "The House of 
Egremont," which has recently appeared, 
were laid in France, and, in order to obtain 
the proper material, a special visit was 
necessary to the country in which the 
events were. laid. The quaint palace of St. 
Germains, with its terraces and broad gar- 
dens, was well studied by the author, who 
spent days in rambling about, and in absorb- 
ing a thorough knowledge of the neighbor- 
hood. Like other authors, she has found 
that to saturate the mind with a certain 
period is a powerful assistance to the imagi- 
nation; and for this reason she oftentimes 
has read three or four entire volumes in 
order to write a story of five thousand words. 

115 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

In 1895 the New York Herald offered 
four prizes : one of ten thousand dollars for 
the best novel, one of three thousand dol- 
lars for the best novelette, one of two 
thousand dollars for the best short story, 
and one of one thousand dollars for the best 
epic poem on a subject of American history. 
The first and third prizes were respectively 
won by Mr. Julian Hawthorne and Mr. 
Edgar Fawcett, while Miss Seawell received 
the money for the best novelette, " The 
Sprightly Romance of Marsac," — and over 
the heads of two thousand competitors. 
When the news that she had received a 
three-thousand-dollar prize reached the old 
family negroes in Gloucester County, the 
darkies magnified the amount ten hundred- 
fold, and went about with natural awe and 
astonishment, while solemnly proclaiming: 
" Mars' John Seawell's daughter done taken 
three million dollars for one book." 
116 



MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL 

The story she considers one of her best 
productions, and it is her best known work 
with the exception of "Little Jarvis"; but 
she has a long list of novels and juveniles 
to her credit, and one play, the manuscript 
of which she was the author, "Maid Mar- 
ian," an amusing and witty satire on the 
Knickerbocker element in New York so- 
ciety, was originally written as a short 
novel, and was subsequently dramatized by 
Miss Seawell for Rosina Vokes, who made 
it a great success. 

Zippincottfs Magazine had the honor of 
receiving her first literary venture, and it 
was her first literary success, for it was 
accepted. The editor who appreciated its 
merit has, however, never had the satisfac- 
tion of knowing his own keenness and lit- 
erary foresight, for it was signed under an 
assumed name. In fact, under a variety of 
pseudonyms, a great number of her earlier 

117 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

stories, sketches, and articles of all sorts 
were published in magazines and newspa- 
pers. Where these immature productions 
are to be found she has never revealed and 
says she never will, and for this reason 
reckons herself more fortunate than most 
writers, for the criticism which might just- 
ly be severe upon this 'prentice work has 
had no chance to be expended. 

Curiously enough, to literature may be 
ascribed the influence that changed her 
earlier religious faith. When a small girl, 
an aunt, who had the reputation of being the 
best-read woman in the State of Virginia, 
warned her that her grandmother, who 
had died many years before her birth, had 
been in youth much unsettled in her re- 
ligious beliefs by reading the very books to 
which her descendant was becoming so 
firmly attached, and with which she was 
spending so much time in the well-fitted 
118 



MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL 

library of "The Shelter." The grand- 
mother in question was undoubtedly a 
woman of uncommon capacity and of rest- 
less inquiry, and probably a very pro- 
nounced agnostic at one time in her life ; 
but sorrow and age and physical suffering, 
brought about a change. Miss Seawell's 
extremely pious aunt always declared that 
wider experience and a deeper knowledge 
of life and of books had changed her mother 
into a devout Christian in middle life. 
Unlike the experience of her grandmother, 
the result of this reading was to turn Miss 
Seawell's thoughts towards religious in- 
quiry instead of in the opposite direction — 
indeed a daring thing for a young girl in a 
community like that of Gloucester County, 
where the Episcopal Church had been 
established for nearly three hundred years, 
and where there was a strong survival of the 
old English idea of church and state. In 

119 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

her own circle of friends and relatives, the 
young girls were confirmed, usually, at 
sixteen or seventeen, and their brothers, 
although not frequently particularly pious, 
were expected to be graduated into vestry- 
men and strict churchmen, as their ances- 
tors had been before them. In the midst 
of her reading of Mr. Jefferson's selec- 
tions of French philosophers, she came 
suddenly across Macaulay's Essays. In 
his review of Ranke's " History of the 
Popes," and in speaking of the Catholic 
Church, occurs this passage: 

"She may still exist in undiminished 
vigor when some traveller from New Zea- 
land shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, 
take his stand on a broken arch of London 
Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." 

This impressed her immensely, and for 
the first time she realized the existence of 
that tremendous community which prefers 
120 



MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL 

the moral case of the great Roman church. 
The severe blows which Macaulay fre- 
quently levels at the Established Church 
of England in his essay on Hallam's " Con- 
stitutional History," as well as the admira- 
tion which Thackeray expressed in nearly 
all his stories for the Catholic religion, 
made a deep impression upon the sensitive 
mind of such a young girl. Macaulay or 
Thackeray never dreamed of making a 
convert to the church of which neither 
was a member, but such indeed was the 
case. 

A list of some of her more impor- 
tant novels includes : " The Berkeleys 
and Their Neighbors," " Throckmorton," 
"Children of Destiny," "Maid Marian," 
" The History of Lady Betty Stair," and 
u The Loves of Arabella." For several 
years she has been running away from the 
reputation she made in her juveniles, 

121 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

because it interferes with her reputation 
for more serious work. It is for this rea- 
son that we have had no further stories 
of Little Jarvis and his fellow midship- 
men. 

A magazine article which Miss Sea well 
once wrote, and which was called " The 
Absence of the Creative Faculty in 
Woman," had considerable ephemeral 
fame. It was praised, attacked and criti- 
cized by writers all over the United States 
and in many European countries. Certain 
masculine critics, as Mr. Andrew Lang, 
who wisely declined to take sides with 
Miss Seawell, declared that her essay had 
disproved her own case. 

" Papa Bouchard," which the Messrs. 
Scribner, Miss Seawell's publishers, claim 
will duplicate the success of " The Sprightly 
Romance of Marsac," will be published 
October the first, 1901. Besides this, she 
122 



MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL 



has a long novel in preparation, to be fin- 
ished early in 1902, and which will prob- 
ably appear under the name of " Franceska 
Capello." 



123 




Courtesy of Dodd, Mead & Co. 

AMELIA E. BARR. 



AMELIA E. BARR 



"¥ ^OR the last sixteen years the 
#7 name of Amelia E. Barr has been 
one of the foremost in the list of 
popular American writers. 

Strictly speaking, Mrs. Barr is as much 
English as American, for she was born in 
Ulverston, Lancashire, England, in 1831, 
and since the establishment of her fame 
her books have been almost as widely read 
in the old country as in this. But, not- 
withstanding the ties of birth and popu- 
lar affection, and notwithstanding the fact 
that many of her stories have dealt with 
British countries and British character, 
she is, as she probably would say herself, 
more American than foreign. For nearly 
fifty years she has been a resident of the 

125 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

LTnited States ; here her children were 
born, here her noble husband died, here 
she has struggled and here succeeded. A 
more interesting career we have not had 
the pleasure of sketching. 

Amelia Edith Huddleston was her 
name in girlhood. Her father was the 
Rev. William Henry Huddleston. She is 
fond of applying to her own case, they say, 
the old Scotch proverb : " It is gude luck 
to be born in a house f u' o' gude company, 
wi' a fu' moon and a high tide." When 
she was a girl she served her father as 
reader, and thus she was introduced into 
the literary as well as into the social 
world. 

Our feminine readers will probably en- 
joy learning how strong an influence dolls 
had on Mrs. Barr's early life. " The 
dolls most in use when I w T as a child 
in Yorkshire and Lancashire," she says, 
126 



AMELIA E. BARE 



"were wooden ones ; a round head, square 
body, legs and arms of thin slats of wood, 
fastened to the body with wire, thus making 
the limbs flexible and movable. ... I 
possessed a number of all sizes, and I don't 
think I used them in the ordinary way. I 
valued them as entities for representing 
my story books, with big dolls for giants, 
little ones for children and fairies, and 
medium ones for men and women." She 
was an imaginative child, it will be noticed. 
"When I was six years old there was a 
great agitation on the slavery question, 
and a black leather doll was given me to 
represent a negro. For some time I failed 
to place him ; then I read ' Robinson Cru- 
soe,' and he became, of course, Man Friday, 
then a little later a slave. My first copy- 
book, I remember, was covered in pale, yel- 
low paper, bearing a picture of a very 
black slave, loaded with chains, toiling in 

127 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

the sugar field, and a tall white overseer, 
with a whip, standing near. I very soon 
abstracted the steel chain that held my 
mother's bunch of keys, loaded my negro 
doll with chains, selected a white doll to 
act as overseer, and finally I allowed the 
doll I called after Apollyon in « Pilgrim's 
Progress ' to run away with the overseer. 
Cinderella was one of my favorite play- 
mates. She was a lovely blonde, as was 
her fairy godmother, and the only doll I 
possessed that might be called a baby was 
a large wax affair that could open and shut 
its eyes, and who came to me on my fourth 
birthday in a long narrow box lined with 
blue satin. . . . When I was eight years 
old my story books were too complex for 
such illustrations as the dolls once pro- 
vided, and I have a dim memory of a wet 
Saturday and ' Stories from Ancient His- 
tory,' and a miniature funeral pyre within 
128 



AMELIA E. BARE 



the nursery fender, on which all the heroes 
of my first romances received the fiery solu- 
tion. I think of them all tenderly now. 
There was a pathos about those graceless 
wooden toys, some of which I can recall 
with a vividness almost startling. They 
still live, though they never had life, and 
this is a mystery which in my next idle 
hour I must ponder." 

Idle hours come seldom to Mrs. Barr, in 
spite of her fulfilled three-score years and 
ten. She is not of the idle race, and she is 
distinguished no less for her enthusiastic 
industry than for her tenderness of heart 
and her fertility of imagination. Mr. Ham- 
ilton W. Mabie tells us also that "as a 
child she was her father's boon companion 
in his preaching tours through the fishing 
villages, and that rocks and boats and the 
surge of the sea were the background and 
accompaniment of many happy days." 

129 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

In 1850, shortly after her education had 
been completed at Glasgow, she married 
Robert Barr, a Scotchman, and four years 
afterward she came to this country with 
him. They lived for a while in New York, 
then in the West, then in the South, and 
finally they settled in Austin, Texas, where 
Mr. Barr established himself as a merchant. 
At the close of the Civil War the family, 
which then included three sons and three 
daughters, moved to Galveston. There 
took place the tragedy which changed the 
course of Mrs. Barr's life. We repeat the 
circumstances as they were related a few 
years ago : 

" The yellow fever broke out with ex- 
traordinary violence in Texas in 1867. 
The terror of the visitation is still remem- 
bered. People died on every side. The 
Indians, especially, fell like flies before the 
poisoned breath of the pestilence. The 
130 



AMELIA E. BARR 



panic spread, and all the white folk who 
could, abandoned the afflicted district. Mr. 
Barr refused to leave, for the Indians 
trusted him, and took from his hand medi- 
cines which they refused to take from an- 
other. The doctors and nurses all died or 
left. Still, Mr. Barr stood his ground, and 
his wife remained by his side. His gallant 
efforts are honorably mentioned in the offi- 
cial reports of that terrible visitation. Mr. 
Barr literally laid down his life to save 
others' lives. Before the pestilence abated, 
Mrs. Barr had lost three sons and her hus- 
band. The three daughters still remained 
to her, and for them she resolved to live 
and work." Or, as Mr. Mabie says, " In 
the desperate struggle against despair, 
which followed, Mrs. Barr turned her face 
northward and settled in New York in the 
autumn of 1869." She was then thirty- 
eight. 

131 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

She was fortunate in bringing with her to 
New York a letter of introduction to Robert 
Bonner, the generous and influential editor 
of the New York Ledger. Her first original 
literary undertaking was a short story pub- 
lished in the Christian Union. While 
writing, she was learning to write. Cir- 
cumstances had thrown her virtually upon 
her own resources. Her naturally buoyant 
disposition stood by her well ; it sweetened 
her work, it brightened the future. Here 
is an account of those days that we once 
ran across : 

"She wrote advertisements, circulars, 
paragraphs, verses, etc. She spent hours 
daily in the Astor Library, studying the 
secrets of her craft, getting up materials for 
descriptive articles and historical stories. 
For a long time she considered herself rich 
if a ten-dollar note stood between her and 
the future. The precious notes were de- 
132 



AMELIA E. BARE, 



posited between the leaves of a Bible, with 
tarnished clasps, which still lies on Mrs. 
Barr's table. One of the incidents that she 
and her daughter, who is her devoted com- 
panion, often recall, is of a night when 
thieves broke in and stole all they could lay 
their hands on, breaking open the desk and 
taking the trinkets that had been deposited 
there for safety, but the Bible that lay 
near it, and that held all the family's fortune, 
was left untouched. . . . The stress of that 
time of struggle and privation was lightened 
when Mrs. Barr's first serial story appeared 
in the columns of the Ledger." 

Her first great success, the success that 
founded her renown, came in 1885 with 
the publication of "Jan Vedder's Wife," 
although we find records of the publication 
of at least three other books — " Scottish 
Sketches" and " Cluny MacPherson " 
(1883) and "Paul and Christina" (1882). 

133 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

But there was power as well as originality 
in "Jan Vedder's Wife," and to this day it 
remains one of the novelist's most note- 
worthy and most characteristic tales. It 
has passed through many editions, and it has 
been read in many countries and many lan- 
guages. It was on Thanksgiving Day, 
1884, by the way, that Mrs. Barr received 
notice of its acceptance. The scene of Jan 
Vedder's disappearance and apparent res- 
urrection has especially been given wide 
quotation because of its rare dramatic force 
— its singular commingling of the earthly 
and the spiritual element, a commingling that 
has had much to do with the establishment 
of the author's remarkable popularity. For, 
in addition to an intimate knowledge of the 
world's simpler folk, Mrs. Barr displays 
the deepest reverence for religion. Which 
fact tends sometimes to make her books 
unique. 

134 



AMELIA E. BARR 



A bit of episode characteristic of the 
author comes to mind. It is the scene in 
the "Bow of Orange Ribbon," that delight- 
ful picture of New York in provincial days, 
when Joris Van Heemskirk decides to cast 
his lot with the patriots. He had ended 
the discussion with his wife, Lysbet. 

" Then he rose, put on his hat, and 
walked down his garden ; and, as he slowly 
paced between the beds of budding flowers, 
he thought of many things — the traditions 
of the past struggles for freedom, and the 
irritating wrongs that had embittered his 
own experience for ten years. There was 
plenty of life yet in the spirit his fathers 
had bequeathed to him ; and, as this and 
that memory of wrong smote it, the soul- 
fire kindled, glowed, burned with passion- 
ate flame. « Free, God gave us this fair 
land, and we will keep it free. There has 
been in it no crowns and scepters, no bloody 

135 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

Philips, no priestly courts of cruelty ; and, 
in God's name, we will have none ! ' 

"He was standing on the river bank; 
and the meadows over it were green and 
fair to see, and the fresh wind blew into 
his soul a thought of his own untrammelled 
liberty. He looked up and down the river, 
and lifted his face to the clear sky, and 
said aloud, < Beautiful land ! To be thy 
children we should not deserve, if one inch 
of thy soil we yielded to a tyrant. Truly 
a vaderland to me and to mine thou hast 
been. Truly do I love thee.' And then, 
his soul being moved to its highest mark, 
he answered it tenderly, in the strong-syl- 
labled mother-tongue that it knew so well : 
* Indien ik u vergeet, o Vaderland ! zoo ver- 
gete mijne regter-hand zich zelve.' " * 

Since 1885 book after book has come 
from the pen of Mrs. Barr with amazing 

* " If I forget thee, O Fatherland ! let uiy right hand 
forget her cunning." — Ps. cxxxvii, 5. 

136 



AMELIA E. BAER 



regularity. It is a pen that fairly rivals 
Marion Crawford's in fertility, which is no 
light statement to make. And yet, not- 
withstanding this abundance — this lux- 
uriance, it might be said — the quality is 
generally excellent, not brilliant, indeed, or 
stylish, but rather sweet and endearing. 
The author of " The Maid of Maiden Lane " 
holds the mirror up to nature — but, as a 
rule, at the right time, at the good and 
happy time. So, her men, for the most 
part, are honest and magnanimous, her 
women chaste and charming. Her latest 
book, « The Lion's Whelp : A Story of 
Cromwell's Time," is one of her strongest. 
During the middle of the winter, Mrs. 
Barr, we are told, seeks recreation in New 
York City or in Virginia, but the spring 
finds her back in her home on Storm King 
Mountain, which lies two miles from Corn- 
wall-on-the-Hudson, " Cherry Croft " the 

137 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

house is named. It was built, we are told, 
on plans drawn by the writer herself. Her 
workshop is on the top floor. A writer in 
the Boston Transcript (July 8, 1901) thus 
describes Mrs. Barr's method of working : 

" When a book is to be completed from 
cover to cover, this woman is up and doing 
long before the ordinary person is awake, 
often rising before daylight, A cold 
plunge, taken directly on rising, a light 
lunch of fruit and coffee, usually partaken 
of on the veranda, for she is another famous 
lover of the open air, spending as much as 
possible of her time within its invigorating 
embrace — prepare her for the day's duties, 
and by the time the sun is beginning to 
gild the mountains opposite her study 
window, she is busy with her pen. At 
twelve comes the important meal of the 
day. A two hours' nap, followed by an- 
other cold plunge, is then in order, after 
138 



AMELIA E. BARR 



which the morning's work is carefully type- 
written by the author's own hands — no 
one else being allowed to handle her manu- 
script — and labors for the day are over. 
Then comes relaxation, indoors or out, call- 
ing or receiving calls, but the moment the 
clock strikes nine, no matter what guests or 
engagements the family may have, she is 
off to bed. This exacting routine is followed 
until the book is finished." 

Not many men or women of seventy live 
more vigorously or work more enthusi- 
astically, and still fewer at that age court 
the success and esteem which still attend 
Amelia E. Barr. 



139 



Copyright by Floride Green. Permission of Doubledny, Page & Co. 
MARY E. WILKINS. 



MARY E. WILKINS 



/T is natural to suppose that any reader 
of current English literature would 
know Miss Wilkins, yet it is the 
much-admired author herself who tells this 
story of her introduction to a popular con- 
temporary : 

"It was before Mr. Crawford had publicly 
appeared as a reader, and just after he had 
read to a select coterie of Brooklyn people 
at the house of a well-known lady. A re- 
ception followed, and when I was intro- 
duced the hostess said, 'Mr. Crawford, I 
wish to introduce Miss Wilkins.' 

" Mr. Crawford gave me a coldly polite 
bow, and I would have passed on perfectly 
satisfied, but not so my hostess. She felt 
that Mr. Crawford ought to have recognized 

141 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

in me a fellow-author, and she quickly fol- 
lowed the first introduction with an impres- 
sive: 

"'Mr. Crawford, this is Miss Mary E. 
Wilkins.' 

"Again the delightful novelist gave me 
a polite bow of recognition. My friend was 
sorely distressed. Not even now did the 
lion of the evening deign to recognize this 
poor little body, but my friend would not 
be repulsed, so she returned afresh to the 
assault, and in a still more impressive man- 
ner, she said: 

" « But, Mr. Crawford, this is Miss Mary 
E. Wilkins, the author of those charming 
stories of New England life.' 

"Mr. Crawford, I felt quite sure, had 
never heard of poor me. I did not wonder 
at it. Why should he ? Living so far away, 
and naturally enough absorbed in his own 
work, he probably had never seen a line I 
142 



MARY E. WILKINS 

had written, but he was equal to the occa- 
sion, and if he did simulate I could forgive 
him, for he was very polite. He bowed and 
smiled most graciously, and shaking me by 
the hand, he expressed great pleasure at 
meeting me. How I have laughed over this 
incident. It may not seem funny to hear 
me relate it, but the time, the place, and his 
bewildered manner as he tried to make me 
believe he knew all about me, was most deli- 
cious comedy." 

The majority of the members of the 
reading public, either in this country or 
in England, would feel no need to 
simulate a knowledge of the author of 
"Pembroke." Mr. Crawford is an extra- 
ordinarily busy man, and he has been grace- 
fully forgiven, but we may well be asked 
to believe that the hostess of that occasion 
was astonished. 

Miss Wilkins has had an admiring audi- 

143 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

ence for the last eighteen years. It was 
early in the eighties that she first tried her 
pen seriously. She wrote a short story 
called " The Ghost Family" for the Boston 
Budget, a weekly SLirvival of the days of 
Boston's literary renown ; and the story won 
a prize of fifty dollars, We might go back 
further than the eighties ; but the fact that 
she wrote poetry at the age of twelve is con- 
ventional. What bright child does not write 
poetry ? 

We shall rely on an old friend of Miss 
Wilkins, Mrs. Kate Upson Clark, for a few 
details : 

" Her first literary attempts were almost 
entirely for children, but at the urgent solici- 
tation of friends she soon began to take up 
a deeper kind of work, and sent her first 
story for older readers to Miss Mary L. 
Booth, then editor of Harpers Bazar. Miss 
Booth thought that such cramped and un- 
144 



MARY E. WILKINS 

formed handwriting promised little, and 
that she was the victim of some ambitions 
but "unavailable" child. With her usual 
conscientiousness, however, she looked the 
little piece carefully over. It was Miss 
Booth's habit when attracted by a story, to 
read it through three times, on different 
days, and in different moods, before accept- 
ing it. She paid this compliment to « Two 
Old Lovers,' the contribution which Miss 
Wilkins had submitted to her. Two days 
later the ' ambitious child' received a hand- 
some check for it. From this time forth 
Miss Booth befriended the young writer in 
every way, and Miss Wilkins, who is almost 
morbidly appreciative of kindness, and as 
true to her friends as one of her own in- 
flexible New England characters, rewarded 
Miss Booth's thoughtfulness by giving to 
her as long as she lived, the first choice of 
her stories." The date of the appearance 

145 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

of "Two Old Lovers" in Harper's Bazar 
is March 31, 1883. 

But the tail of the sketch is moving faster 
than the head. The author of " Two Old 
Lovers" was born in Randolph, Mass., in 
1862. Her father, a native of Salem, was 
a descendant of a conspicuous Puritan, Bray 
Wilkins. Her mother was a Holbrook of 
Holbrook, an old-established family of Mas- 
sachusetts country folk. Mr. Wilkins was a 
carpenter of ancient style, that is to say, he 
was both designer and builder. When Mary 
was a little girl, however, he gave up his pro- 
fession to keep store in Brattleboro, Vt. In 
the town where restless Mr. Kipling alighted 
for a while, the daughter of the Randolph 
carpenter passed her girlhood. Mr. J. E. 
Chamberlain, who collaborated with her in 
the writing of " The Long Arm" (the two 
thousand dollar newspaper prize detective 
story), remarks, " so far as local influences 
146 



MARY E. WILKINS 

have affected her work, I fancy that those of 
Southern Vermont have preponderated." 

Mr. Chamberlain also is the authority 
for the statement that " Her creations are 
mainly drawn purely out of her imagina- 
tion, and squared to Nature and reality by 
the exercise of a keen and omnivorous fac- 
ulty of observation which has grown in- 
stinctive, and is as unconscious as it is 
accurate — like the minutely true eye- 
measurements with which the Japanese car- 
penters astonished us at the World's Fair. 
And for her nature-settings and decora- 
tions she depends rather on the sharp recol- 
lections of childhood than on more recent 
observations. She never had a bit of the 
spirit of the naturalist." 

All the same, there are glimpses of Ran- 
dolph — of the Randolph of her childhood, 
in some of Miss Wilkins's stories. We 
read in " Jerome " : 

147 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

" Three fields to the northward from the 
Edwards's house was a great rock ledge ; 
on the southern side of it was a famous 
hiding-place for a boy on a windy spring 
day. There was a hollow in the rock for 
a space as tall as Jerome, and the ledge 
extended itself out beyond it like a shelter- 
ing granite wing to the westward. ... At 
the side of the gentle hill at the left a pile 
of blooming peach trees looked as if they 
were moving down the slope to some impe- 
rious march music of the spring." 

That spot is in Randolph — within 
sight of the weather-beaten, two-story house 
in which the author was born. But Miss 
Wilkins is careful not to offend the towns- 
people by portraying the living. She has 
portrayed the dead, however. Barnabas, 
in " Pembroke," was a Randolph character. 
As a rule, she draws from her imagination, 
as Mr. Chamberlain says. 
148 



MA RY E. WILKINS 

In the ten years that Miss Wilkins lived 
in Brattleboro she experienced a world of 
sorrow. Her father died, and her mother, 
and her sister. Burdened with her grief, 
Mary returned to Randolph, and there, 
with friends, in a typical country house 
standing about half a mile from her birth- 
place, she has since lived. Where she will 
live the rest of her life rests largely with 
Dr. Charles Manning Freeman, of Metu- 
chen, N. J. 

The author chooses to be distant to all 
but her dear friends, or, rather, she has a 
shrinking nature, like the sensitive plant. 
" The ancient kitchen which is Miss Wil- 
kins's sitting-room is not also her writing- 
room. Though it is nicely retired, and out 
of the noise of the exceedingly quiet house- 
hold in which she has her home, its win- 
dow commands a view of nothing but the 
side of the adjoining house, which affords 

149 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

but slight inspiration. She writes upstairs, 
in a room that looks off eastwardly over 
the street with its electric cars, and to the 
low coast hills and woods in the distance." 
Before she became addicted to the type- 
writer — which was only a few years ago — 
she was accustomed, when in the mood for 
work, to produce a thousand words a day 
in what she once herself described as an 
" unformed and childish " style of hand- 
writing. To-day her pages are as prim as 
a professional secretary's. We have a page 
before us, and at the bottom of it is the 
decrepid signature. It gives character to 
the page, however — and what would not 
many an autograph hunter give for it! 
Now and then, when at the height of her 
fervor, Miss Wilkins will write three or 
four thousand words a day; and now and 
then a week will pass without winning a 
line from her. "Environment affects her 
150 



MARY E. WILKINS 

strongly," says Mrs. Clark. " She finds it 
difficult, sometimes impossible, to compose 
anything when away from home." 

" She is not," Mr. Chamberlain says, 
" one of those fortunate ones who can say, 
4 Go to ! I will sleep from ten until six, 
and then be fresh for my work.' Sleep 
with her has to be wooed with subtle arts, 
and will follow no program. Sometimes 
her work goes reluctantly, and sometimes 
she is mastered and possessed by it, and it 
leaves her nervously exhausted as well as 
desorientee regarding every-day affairs. 
After writing her Deerfield massacre story 
. . . she found it hard to make herself realize 
that she was not living in the time and 
place of the story: she really believed that 
the story — her story — was true." 

For with a strong imagination is com- 
bined in her an extremely sensitive nature. 
Her father was remarkable for his nervous- 

151 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

ness, it is said, and so was her maternal 
grandfather. And Mrs. Clark assures us 
that, " The difficulties against which she 
contends are largely physical. Though her 
constitution is apparently sound, she is 
small, being only five feet tall, and is very 
slight." That was some years ago ; to-day 
Miss Wilkins is plump of figure. "She 
possesses the sensitive organization which 
accompanies a large intellectual develop- 
ment in such a frame. Her transparent 
skin, her changing eyes, sometimes seeming 
blue, sometimes hazel, her heavy braids of 
golden hair, her delicately molded features, 
all proclaim a singularly high-strung and 
nervous temperament." 

Doubtless this has influenced her choice 
of residence. Randolph is off the main 
line of literature, and perhaps that is why 
she has resisted the allurements of Boston. 
We saw her at a reunion of the Daughters 
152 



MARY E. WILKINS 

of Vermont in the "Hub," once upon a 
time, and she acted, now haughtily, and 
again timidly, as if she would like to rim 
home. Yet they say that with her chafing- 
dish — her only hobby — in hand, she is a 
prodigal hostess. 

Phillips Brooks is reported to have said 
that "A Humble Romance" was the best 
short story he ever read. It certainly reveals 
Miss Wilkins in her strongest form. It is 
realism brought close to idealism. In its 
few pages are set forth simply yet artis- 
tically, in a manner characteristic of her 
most successful representation of rural life 
in New England, quaint humor and grave 
tragedy, melting pathos and tickling com- 
edy, — in the background a touch of careless 
virtue, and in the foreground an example of 
rough but admirable honor. Not every 
critic will go as far as Phillips Brooks went, 
but the discriminating critic will admit 

153 



LITTLE PILGKIMAGES 

that "A Humble Romance" is one of the 
author's perfect efforts. Perhaps to an 
admirer of the demure woman of Randolph 
that is saying as much as could be said. A 
few days ago she said that "Pembroke" 
was probably her best work. In England 
— where she is hardly less beloved than in 
this country — a similar opinion exists 
among the leading critics. And, by the 
way, Mr. Kipling is reported to have de- 
clared that her stories will survive his, and, 
at the same time, to have confessed that 
they touch him altogether too deeply ! 

But Miss Wilkins's pen does not deal 
exclusively with rural life. In 1893 she 
turned to the stage for an arena, and 
" Giles Corey, Yeoman," a drama of the 
early Puritan days, was acted in Boston 
under the auspices of the Theatre of Arts 
and Letters. Two years afterward, in col- 
laboration with the aforementioned Mr. 
154 



MARY E. WILKINS 

Chamberlain, she wrote a detective story, 
" The Long Arm," which won a prize of 
$2,000 offered by a newspaper syndicate. 
Her latest novel, " The Heart's Highway," 
dealt effectively with a colonial theme, and 
her next novel — "A Portion of Labor" is 
the title of it, we believe — is said to have 
an industrial setting. 

The reading public — whose interest in 
literature is not confined to books — had 
taken it for granted that Miss Wilkins 
would remain in single blessedness for life, 
but in October, 1900, was announced her 
engagement to Dr. Charles Manning Free- 
man, of Metuchen, N. J. Probably the 
author had never thought that she would 
live to be the central figure of a sensation, 
but she was, nevertheless; and the public 
soon began to ask, When will the marriage 
take place? The question remains unan- 
swered, but we betray no real secret by 

155 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

remarking that the affair is in no danger of 
ending like the bride-to-be's well-known 
story, "Two Old Lovers." 



156 




Courtesy of Harper & Bio* 



OCTAVE THANET. 



OCTAVE THANET 
(MISS FRENCH) 



J^v H. STODDARD once said that 
j\ Octave Thanet was the best writer 
# of short stories in America. In 
fact, he went further, we believe, and said 
that he enjoyed her work more than that 
of any other writer of the day. That was in 
1888. Without discussing the value of the 
opinion, we may say that the fair Westerner 
is writing as vigorously and as picturesquely 
as ever ; and right here we shall take the lib- 
erty of anticipating a very natural question 
by reprinting some remarks she made a few 
years ago : 

"How did I come to take the nom de 
plume of Octave Thanet? Well, really, that 
was an accident. I was a little wary of hav- 
ing my identity known in the first place, and 

157 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

made up my mind to write under a fictitious 
name. Octave was the name of a school 
friend of mine. It is both French and 
Scotch. I thought if I could find another 
name to go with it that was both Scotch and 
French I would adopt that. I was riding 
on a train one time when we stopped at a 
way station, and on a siding near where I 
sat was a freight car painted red. On the 
side was chalked the word " Thanet." 
What it meant or how it got there I have 
not the slightest idea, but I decided then and 
there to adopt it. Lots of people still think 
that Octave Thanet is a man, and I frequent- 
ly get letters like this : ' My dear Mr. 
Thanet : I have read your works and I am 
sure you are a manly man.' They usually 
contain a request for a small loan, to be 
repaid in the near future." 

There is an unmistakable masculine tinge 
in her style sometimes, and her interests 
158 



OCTAVE THANET 

are half masculine. Her interest in the sub- 
ject of the relations between capital and 
labor, for instance, is deeper than that of 
probably any other woman in the land, just 
as her knowledge of the subject is more ex- 
tensive. Six years ago, besides she took an 
active interest in the Flagler case in Wash- 
ington, and this year she displayed similar 
activity at Pittsfield, Mass., in connection 
with the Fosburgh case. It was she, indeed, 
who advanced the interesting theory that it 
may not have been thieves that entered the 
Fosburgh house. " Has it occurred to any- 
one," she asked, "that at the very time the 
Fosburgh firm were in the midst of a very 
serious difficulty with a labor union ? " 
And then she added what, coming from not 
merely a student of industrial matters but 
from an outspoken friend of the Ameri- 
can workingman, seems startling : " It is 
a characteristic of labor unions to regard a 

159 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

strike as war, and, you know, all is fair in 
war. Such men are as honest in their con- 
ception of right as we are, but they would 
think it as much a plan of campaign to « do 
up' the chief enemy as General Funston did 
in the capture of Aguinaldo. Men in such 
a cause would be just the kind to scorn to 
lay hands on valuables. They are not 
thieves. But they are as clannish as were 
the Irish at the time of the Phoenix Park 
murders, and would never betray their own." 

But more of her sociology, later. Let 
us turn to her life. 

Her name is Alice French, and she was 
born in Andover, Mass., on March 19, 
1850. Her father, George Henry French, 
was at one time in the bank business with 
Austin Corbin, and thirty years ago he 
was the president of the Davenport and 
St. Paul Railroad. That was some ten 
years after his change of residence from 
160 



OCTAVE THANET 

Andover to Davenport, Iowa. At Daven- 
port lie established an iron factory, which 
business, we understand, is still conducted 
by his sons. The Frenches, by the way, 
are of Irish descent. The American branch 
of the stock was founded by Sir William 
French, who emigrated to Massachusetts in 
the seventeenth century. One of his descen- 
dants took a prominent part in the Revo- 
lutionary War, "The Fighting Parson of 
Andover " they called him. Governor Mar- 
cus Morton was the father of Miss French's 
mother, and Chief Justice Morton was 
Mrs. French's brother. On this side the 
author is descended from the Mayflower 
immigrants. One of these pioneers married 
Governor Bradford's sister. 

Miss French was educated at Abbot 
Academy and at Vassar. Her taste for the 
pen came as early as that of most other 
girls for the needle. "I began writing, 

161 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

like many another, at an early age," she 
informed an interviewer in Washington six 
years ago, "and when I was at boarding- 
school I surreptitiously sent off a number 
of literary efforts to the magazines, all of 
which were returned with thanks. No, not 
all of them, for, through some accident, 
one was printed in Godeys Magazine, and I 
was given a six months' subscription in 
payment. I have never in after years 
received a check which gave me as much 
pleasure. My earlier efforts were devoted 
for the most part to very heavy essays on 
questions of sociology. I was a great stu- 
dent of history and political economy, but 
for three years I made no addition to my lit- 
erary work. I read everything that I 
thought would improve my style, saw every- 
thing I could that I thought would increase 
my powers of observation, and literally 
worked hard at my preparation for a literary 
162 



OCTAVE THANET 

career. I wrote two very heavy essays on 
the subject of pauperism, and if Iliad my own 
way to-day I would rather write history 
than fiction. Yet I suppose that fiction is the 
history of every-day life, and may be made 
just as true a picture of our day and genera- 
tion as a more laborious and ambitious effort. 
" I sent one story at a time to the Cen- 
tury, and the editor suggested that I would 
be wise to confine myself to short stories. I 
cannot say that I wanted to altogether, but 
I realized that I might make from one 
hundred dollars to three hundred dollars 
a year writing on social and economic 
questions, and as I enjoy spending rather 
more money than I receive as dividends 
from an iron mill, I decided to take his ad- 
vice. Since then I have met with some 
degree of favor and success. All my 
stories that I have written since that three 
years of rest have been printed somewhere, 

163 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

though not always where they were first 
sent. I have had stories that I sent to the 
leading magazines end up in a western 
weekly paper, and received three dollars 
and a half, when I had counted on fifty 
dollars." 

Doubtless the foregoing account may be 
regarded as reliable. But we have met 
other conflicting statements. A member 
of Miss French's family has been referred to 
as the author of the statement that her 
first story was sent to Harper's Monthly, 
"and, after a long and weary waiting, it 
was published in their Bazar, as being not 
up to the mark of the monthly magazine." 
According to Mrs. Lillie B. Chace Wyman, 
" her sketch called ' A Communist's Wife ' 
was published by Zippincotfs Magazine in 
1878, under the title of 'Communists and 
Capitalists.' . . . The young author received 
forty dollars for it." This may have been 
164 



OCTAVE THANET 

one of the two "very heavy essays" to 
which the author has referred. 

However, it was "The Bishop's Vaga- 
bond," published in The Atlantic Monthly in 
January, 1884, which forms the cornerstone 
of Octave Thanet's fame. It is a memorable 
story in many respects. It signalized the 
author's first display of her gift of narrative 
power, and also her first attempt to portray 
southern character. Mrs. Louise Chandler 
Moulton used to maintain that the story 
" shows Octave Thanet at her best." It is 
certainly a remarkable welding of humor and 
pathos, and the wreck of the train is as dra- 
matic a scene as Sardou himself ever drew. 

But, while the dramatic element is in 
mind, let us take a scene from " Expiation," 
Miss French's most ambitious work — the 
scene in which Bud Fowler covertly watches 
Fairfax Rutherford on guard over the vil- 
lanous Dick Barnabas in the swamp. The 

165 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

guerilla is pleading to be freed, and the 
hero is sorely perplexed. 

" ' It 's no use, Barnabas ; I bear you no 
malice, but I can 't let you go.' 

" 'Ye das tit let me go ! You 're a coward ! ' 
screamed the wretch. His voice was terrible. 

" Fairfax's face was whiter than his. In- 
stead of replying to the taunt, he pulled a 
whiskey flask out of his pocket and threw 
it at the outlaw, calling him to catch it, 
drink it — it would keep the cold out. 

"But he would not look at the man 
gulping down the liquor in furious haste. 

"He wheeled his horse to ride back a 
little distance, thinking to get a better 
view through the trees, and to call for help. 
At the same instant Betty Ward shied, 
and something like a line of white fire 
sheared the air past him, to bury itself in a 
cypress-trunk, where it hung quivering — 
Dick Barnabas's bowie-knife. 
166 



OCTAVE THANET 

" Fairfax turned. But not for the useless 
blow ; he turned because the wood was re- 
verberating with the crash of a gunshot and 
a scream of agony. 

" Where Dick had stood there remained 
only an awful bas-relief of a head and 
shoulders flung face downward, with out- 
stretched arms on the smooth black mud. 
A hand moved once. The wind lifted the 
long black hair. That was all. In a few 
moments the smooth black surface was un- 
broken. 

" Bud Fowler stepped calmly down from 
his perch in a swamp hackberry-tree, at 
right angles to Fairfax. He was neither 
pale nor flushed, but sallow and freckled 
and solemn-looking, as usual. And, as 
usual, one of his hands was hitching up his 
trousers. 

" ' All that ar good whiskey plumb 
wasted ! ' was his first speech. ' Wa'al, he 

167 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

won't drink no more. I promised maw I 'd 
kiU 'im, an' I done it.' " 

For a small picture it is one of the most 
terribly dramatic in American fiction. In 
excitement it falls short of the rescue of 
the bishop in " The Bishop's Vagabond," 
the scene to which we referred previously, 
but for grimness combined with brevity it 
is unsurpassably impressive. 

Coming back to Mrs. Moulton's opinion 
and the question of preference, there has 
for years been a strong popular and critical 
liking for "The Ogre of Ha Ha Bay," 
which, it seems to us, shows the author " at 
her best." This story was printed in The 
Atlantic Monthly in October, 1885. It 
won for Miss French the hearty admiration 
of Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 

" Truth," she said to an interviewer once, 
" is what I seek above all things else. I 
want to tell my story as it really is, and 
168 



OCTAVE THANET 

describe things and people as they really 
are" — which reminds us of a famous line 
that Kipling wrote a few years ago. " I do 
not try to write « purpose stories,' nor have 
my stories often a pointed moral. I say 
what I have to say, and let my readers 
draw their own conclusions." Which re- 
minds us — if another intrusion will be 
excused — of what a critic said when " Ex- 
piation " and "We All " were new : " There 
is a lurid, realistic tone ... in some of her 
later fiction that does not impress us as 
favorably as that which had preceded it." 
But Octave Thanet is stubborn in her pur- 
poses — and erratic, as witness her prepos- 
terous ideas on the Fosburgh mystery. She 
does not court popularity. But we were 
quoting her remarks : 

" Yes, I have written much of western 
towns. I think it is in the villages and 
in the country districts that the best of our 

169 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

American citizenship can be found to-day, 
not in the big cities. I am a believer in all 
things American, and I believe, too, that 
many of the social questions that vex us to- 
day may be solved without hard feeling or 
trouble if both sides try to understand each 
other. Sympathy and understanding are 
needed." 

Miss French's working hours are as long 
as the daylight is, but she has her wholesome 
amusements, also. She loves the southwest- 
ern country. There, we are told, she roams 
enthusiastically, admiring the landscape, 
which she calls " ideally beautiful "; and 
her wanderings always strengthen her con- 
viction that " there are no forests like the 
cypress woods in Spring." She has been 
wont to spend a part of every summer in the 
East, on the sands of Cape Cod. It was in 
the East a decade or so ago, that she acquired 
no mean skill in photography. 
170 



OCTAVE THANET 

One who has viewed the author at close 
range says : " Many seeing Miss French 
would readily believe her a very contented 
German. She is of medium height, rather 
stout, and has light brown, curling hair, now 
just beginning to mark the flight of time. 
Her expression is very animated and her 
conversation vivacious. She excels in cook- 
ing and is very domestic." 

She excels, too, we must say, in the writ- 
ing of short stories. Writers of that sort of 
literature have become almost as numerous 
in this country as blades of grass since Mr. 
Stoddard uttered his very flattering opinion 
of her, but the name of Octave Thanet is 
still exceedingly brilliant, and in adeptness 
of construction and power of expression and 
vividness of portrayal, the author of " The 
Bishop's Vagabond " still remains among 
our foremost writers of fiction. 



171 




MARSHALL SAUNDERS. 



MARSHALL SAUNDERS 



r'HERE was once a young French 
man who was studying the painter's 
art. Similar to the usual student 
of small stature and equally small means, 
he had an enormous ambition. He worked 
with a will, and yet in every sketch of 
casts, of moving figures, or of still life, his 
restless fingers always ran instinctively to 
the military. The signing of his name to 
a poster or oil would always be accompanied 
by some small token of a soldier's life, 
a bugle, a bayonet, a cuirassier's helmet, or 
what not. One day his instructor accosted 

him thus : " Well, , you have been a 

good student and a hard worker, but you 
should be a general. Go and join the 
army ! " He followed this advice, but the 

173 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

overwhelming sense of the artistic in his 
nature drew him back again to the pencil 
and the paint brush. When he died the 
greatest delineator of European military 
life had been lost to the world. 

This incident bears directly upon the 
life and art of Marshall Saunders, for hers 
is a mind that has its own particular sphere 
of creative ability, and in this sphere it has 
remained and has won success. The same 
invisible something that drew the French- 
man's fingers to the soldier, has drawn the 
imagination of Miss Saunders to the delin- 
eation of the lives and characteristics of 
simple natures. Differing also from a 
prominent American authoress who gave 
promise of masterful work in this same 
sphere by one great story on the American 
child, but disappointed those who expected 
wonderful things by spending the time 
subsequent to its production in the creation 
174 



MARSHALL SAUNDERS 

of romances of a degenerate English aris- 
tocracy ; Miss Saunders has followed the 
success of her first great juvenile with 
other successes of equal merit. "The 
Adventures of 'Tilda Jane " in 1901 is a 
chronicle which bids fair to be as widely 
read as the story of " Beautiful Joe," which 
appeared in 1894, and has sold four hun- 
dred thousand strong. Worth alone could 
stimulate such a reading. 

This worth is of a character which is 
similar to the motto of most successful 
business men, " in the long run, honesty is 
the best policy." The value of her writ- 
ing is the value that the stories of Louisa 
May Alcott possess, that of purity, honesty, 
and simplicity, characteristics which are 
alone able to sustain the respect and ad- 
miration of the Anglo-Saxon, no matter in 
what direction they are employed. 

She was born at her grandfather's house 

175 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

in Milton, Queen's County, Nova Scotia, 
on April 13, 1861, and is the daughter 
of a clergyman. In early life he conducted 
her education, and as he was a great Latin 
scholar, gave her a thorough drilling in 
that language, a foundation which is un- 
deniably accountable for the purity and 
vigor of her style. At the age of six, an 
occurrence took place that was a memora- 
ble one for a child of her years. The 
family left their beautiful country home 
and moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and of 
her first impressions of the city she has 
said : " I shall never forget the feeling 
of depression, as I gathered my brothers 
and sisters around me (I am the eldest of 
the family) and, sitting on our front door- 
step, surveyed the rows of houses opposite. 
What a change in our lives ! We country 
plants had been transferred to the arid soil 
of a city. We turned our backs on the 
176 



MARSHALL SAUNDERS 

confusion of unpacking, and wandered up 
and down the street. I remember being 
particularly struck with a row of seven 
houses all alike. Such a thing had been 
unknown in my previous experience." 

With the adaptability of childhood, how- 
ever, she soon became accustomed to city 
life, although her love for the country has 
ever been the stronger. She was educated 
in public and private schools until fifteen, 
when at a Presbyterian boarding school in 
Scotland she learned how to stifle the 
agonies of homesickness. After a year in 
Edinburgh she was sent to France, where 
she was thrown almost entirely with French 
people, and a year or two later returned to 
Nova Scotia — " brimful of fun, having 
passed through many interesting experi- 
ences, and with nothing now to do." For 
some time she taught school, and then 
began her literary work — and quite by 

177 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

chance. In her own words, she tells ns 
that upon one occasion, her father asked 
her to reply to a letter that he had recently 
received from Dr. Rand, a professor in a 
Canadian college. " The subject matter of 
the correspondence was of a public char- 
acter and had its humorous side. In re- 
plying to the letter of the professor, who 
had been from early childhood an intimate 
friend of the family, I indulged in some 
banter which impressed him. In his re- 
ply to my father he said : ' Judging from 
Marshall's letter, her calling is assured. 
Why does she not begin at once to write ? ' 
The idea struck me as an exceedingly 
amusing one, and not until the intimate 
friend had referred to it again, did I con- 
consider it. Then I asked him, 'What 
shall I write about ? ' 

" < Write of the beauty of our winter 
scenery,' he responded, « of the stillness 
178 



MARSHALL SAUNDERS 

of the woods, the rabbits' track in the 
snow.' 

" I was grateful to him for the suggestion 
but did not seem able to act upon it. How- 
ever, I turned the matter over in my mind, 
and shortly afterwards when both my par- 
ents were away in the country, took pen 
and paper and sat down to write. I was 
then twenty-three years old, and the sensa- 
tional appealed to me more strongly than 
anything else. I could make nothing of the 
rabbit, so discarded him for a burglar. In 
three weeks I had concocted a story of a 
man, his wife, and a robbery. Now what 
to do with it ? I went to town with my 
sister Rita, my first confidante in literary 
affairs, and bought an armful of magazines 
and papers." Her sister was as ignorant 
as she was, but between them they decided 
on the Leslie publications. They, if any, 
would be able to appreciate her venture, so 

179 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

the story was mailed and the result was 
anxiously awaited. 

One day her parents came home and she 
went to them with a letter. Mrs. Frank 
Leslie had sent her forty dollars for her 
story, and " she would be pleased to get 
another one." 

"My sister and I made a rapid and 
jubilant calculation," she tells us ; " forty 
dollars for every three weeks in the year 
— what a comfortable amount of pin 
money ! Alas ! the next story was 
promptly rejected. However, my parents 
came to my rescue. 4 You can write and 
you like to write,' my father said; 'take 
all the time you wish, and remember that 
uninterrupted success does not come to 
anyone setting out on any career.' There- 
fore I wrote on. I needed practice, and 
occasionally I sent a story to some paper 
or magazine. Some were accepted, more 
180 



MARSHALL SAUNDERS 

rejected, and there is one dismal entry in 
my note-book : ' Two stories stolen by a 
literary bureau.' " 

With excellent judgment she now spent 
several years in foreign travel, and return- 
ing to Nova Scotia began writing more 
vigorously than ever. She became corres- 
pondent for a Canadian newspaper, but it 
was not until 1887 that she had the grat- 
ification of seeing one of her own produc- 
tions in book form. It was called " My 
Spanish Sailor," and was brought out by 
a London firm. Its reception by the Eng- 
lish press was a warm one, but did not in- 
sure a large sale either in England or Can- 
ada. Nothing daunted, she still applied 
herself diligently to literary work and in 
1892, after returning from a year's visit in 
northern Canada, saw the advertisement 
of the American Humane Educational 
Society for a story about animals, and be- 

181 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

came immediately possessed with the de- 
sire of competing for it, for she is passion- 
ately fond of dumb creatures and had 
never attempted a story about them. The 
preparation of " Beautiful Joe " took six 
months, and the story was largely of her 
own life. It gained the coveted prize, 
which was two hundred dollars, but the 
alternative was offered the author of re- 
taining the manuscript and forfeiting the 
prize. This she preferred, and for six 
months " Beautiful Joe " went begging 
among the publishers. Finally it fell into 
the hands of a firm in Philadelphia, one 
of whose members recognized its merit and 
accepted the responsibility of bringing it 
out. In a few years it had sold over two 
hundred thousand copies and had been 
translated into Swedish, German, and 
Japanese. Since the publication of " Our 
Dogs " by John Brown, and the touching 
182 



MARSHALL SAUNDERS 

story of " Rab and his Friends " by the 
same author, no better or more sympa- 
thetic narrative of animal life has yet ap- 
peared. 

" Daisy," a short temperance story, writ- 
ten for an English charity, was published 
during the following year, and " Charles 
and His Lamb" in 1896. This was like- 
wise a children's story, and although it 
did not share the great popularity of 
" Beautiful Joe," a letter written by an 
Italian princess to the author, will show 
how far from home it penetrated and was 
appreciated. Writing from Naples, she 
touchingly remarked : " I never read any- 
thing sweeter in my life than the story of 
that darling child and his lamb. May the 
dear Father who made them both, bless 
them both, and her, too, who has written 
so lovingly of them." " Such epistles as 
these are more to be desired than the most 

183 



LITTLE PILGRIMA GES 

flattering criticism of the keen reviewer, 
who has become so satiated with manu- 
script, and excellent manuscript at that, 
that only the most artistic work could un- 
loosen a word of ardent praise," an eminent 
critic has said : " it is similar to the word 
of admiration the minister receives from 
the poor parishioner, who, from the very 
last seat in the fashionably crowded church, 
has listened with appreciation to his words 
of hope and comfort. His simple com- 
mendation gives more genuine and lasting 
satisfaction than the well-phrased and 
laudatory paragraph in the ecclesiastical 
review." 

" For the Other Boy's Sake " came out in 
1897, and " The House of Armour," " The 
King of the Park," and " Rose a Charlitte " 
in 1898. Of them, the latter, a tale of the 
country of Longfellow's "Evangeline," was 
destined to meet with a most favorable recep- 

184 



MARSHALL SAUNDERS 

tion. Many of the Acadians, it is known, 
after enduring unutterable hardships in 
exile, found their way back to the land of 
their birth and there resettled the aban- 
doned country and made new homes. In 
the western part of Nova Scotia there is 
one continuous village, thirty-five miles in 
length, which winds about the sinuous 
curve of St. Mary's Bay. It is here that 
the Acadians live separately from the 
English to the present day, and still pre- 
serve their language, traditions, customs, 
and unique manner of life. Here Miss 
Saunders spent the summer of 1897, and 
" Rose a Charlitte " was the resultant. 

In 1899 appeared "Deficient Saints," a 
story of Maine, in which the characters 
were of the same wholesome purity that 
has typified the productions of her imagi- 
nation. They were descendants of an old 
French family, whose home for many years 

185 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

had been in Maine, and the plot dealt in 
the reunion of the many branches of the 
original house, and the obstructive work- 
ings of the French and Puritan emotions 
in each individual. It was soon followed 
by " Her Sailor" (which was her first 
novel rewritten), " For His Country," a 
patriotic story for children, and « 'Tilda 
Jane," which first appeared in the Youttis 
Companion, and was from the beginning 
a tremendous success. " 'Tilda Jane " is a 
small orphan who seeks industriously for 
a home, and the experiences through which 
she passes in the endeavor to reach the 
coveted object possess a pathetic humor 
that is of peculiar charm. Miss Saunders 
is exceedingly fond of local stories, and to 
collect material for this narrative, travelled 
through Maine with note-book in hand. 
The orphan arouses interest because she 
appeals to that longing in every human 
186 



MARSHALL SAUNDERS 

breast — the longing for a happy home. 
" 'Tilda wanted a fire and a rocking-chair 
and someone to smooth her head and call 
her « my own dear child.' ' 

Mr. Angell, president of the American 
Humane Society, has said it is not enough 
to educate the intellect, but that one must 
also educate the heart. That the schools 
and colleges are multiplying, but that 
crime is on the increase. That if one but 
teaches the little child his duty to the lower 
creation, statistics prove that he will be 
more mindful of duty to the higher. This 
idea Miss Saunders has assimilated, and 
consequently her pet hobby is that of hu- 
mane education. 

Her apprenticeship has indeed been a 
long and varied one. Articles from her 
pen, and of varying lengths, have appeared 
in nearly every important magazine in this 
country and in Canada, and, as she says of 

187 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

" 'Tilda Jane," " I am learning all the time, 
and have profited by former mistakes in 
its composition." It is only rarely that a 
real character is put into a story. The 
heroine of " Beautiful Joe," was her own 
beloved sister, who died at the age of 
seventeen, and her character was faithfully 
drawn ; but usually she prefers to use sug- 
gestions — a little from here, there, and from 
everywhere. 

The fact that as a child she enjoyed boy's 
books because they possessed more life and 
energy than stories for girls, in some measure 
accounts for the vitality that she has shown 
in most of her productions. Throughout 
her life she has been an omnivorous reader, 
making literary pilgrimages in the city, to 
the shrines of ancient and modern histori- 
ans, and, when all else failed, taking to a 
cyclopedia of anecdotes of literature and 
fine arts. In the country, some of her dear- 
188 



MARSHALL SAUNDERS 

est spots were the old garrets. " From 
their hiding places under the eaves, I 
would draw out old books and back num- 
bers of magazines. Reading has been one 
of the greatest pleasures of my life." 

Representing, as she does, the best and 
purest moral force in literature, and in a 
century when there seems to be danger of 
a literary degradation through popular 
clamor for books of a realistic and ques- 
tionable type, it is just to hope for what 
one of Dickens' characters so much de- 
sired : " a plenty, an' as hot off'n the stove 
as it will come." Though we cannot put 
in a plea of a similar nature, — for literary 
preparation, as all who try well know, must 
be undertaken first with pains, and again 
with time, in order to excel ; we can at 
least make the additional remark, that the 
world will be all the better for more 
" Beautiful Joes " and " 'Tilda Janes." 

189 





;; :? r pPF 




mjpg 




B « - mM 




IB wHJIm i 







KATE DOUGLAS WIG GIN. 



KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN 
(MRS. RIGGS) 



jf$& postscript to a very amusing 
/J letter which Kate Douglas Wiggin 
-^ -*" had written to an inquisitive biog- 
rapher, and which she had addressed to 
" My dear Bos well," and playfully ended 
with " Believe me, my dear Bozzy, Sin- 
cerely your Johnson (K. D. W.)," her 
sister added the following : 

My sister was certainly a capable little 
person at a tender age, concocting delectable 
milk-toast, browning toothsome buckwheats, 
and generally making a very good Parent's 
Assistant. I have also visions of her toiling 
at patchwork and oversewing sheets like a 
nice old-fashioned little girl in a story-book; 
and in connection with the linsey-woolsey 
frock and the sled before mentioned, I see a 
blue and white hood with a mass of shining 

191 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

fair hair escaping below it, and a pair of very- 
pink cheeks. 

Further to illustrate her personality, I 
think no one much in her company at any age 
could have failed to note an exceedingly 
lively tongue and a general air of executive 
ability. 

If I am to be truthful, I must say that I 
recall few indications of budding authorship, 
save an engrossing diary (kept for six 
months only), and a devotion to reading. 

Her " literary passions " were the " Arabian 
Nights," " Scottish Chiefs," " Don Quixote," 
" Thaddeus of Warsaw," Irving's " Mahomet," 
Thackeray's " Snobs," " Undine," and the 
"Martyrs of Spain." These volumes, joined 
to an old green Shakespeare and a Plum 
Pudding edition of Dickens, were the chief 
of her diet. 

But stay ! while I am talking of literary 
tendencies, I do remember a certain prize 
essay entitled " Pictures in the Clouds,"— not 
so called because it took the prize, alas ! but 
because it competed for it. 

There is also a myth in the household 
(doubtless invented by my mother) that my 
192 



KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN 

sister learned her letters from the signs in 
the street, and taught herself to read when 
scarcely out of long clothes. This may be 
cited as a bit of " corroborative detail/' though 
personally I never believed in it. 
Johnson's Sister, 

K A. S. 

The " lively tongue and general air of ex- 
ecutive ability " which were hers as a child 
are what have won her success in later 
years. Wisdom and wit, practical knowl- 
edge and capacity, have here been blended 
with curious balance. Perhaps the varied 
experiences of her career have been of ex- 
ceptional influence, and have stimulated 
a keener insight into things human, and a 
more delicate and humorous appreciation 
of certain phases of life than others possess. 
Her ancestors, indeed, bestowed good gifts, 
for they were men of prominence in the 
church, in politics, and at the New England 
bar, combining a certain shrewd humor 

193 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

with stern Puritan wholesomeness, many 
traditions of which have been handed down 
in the family. Her environment has also 
been diversified : born in Philadelphia, she 
was educated in New England, next trans- 
planted to California, and then brought 
back to the Atlantic coast, where she has 
only spasmodically remained. 

The excellent and wholesome St. 
Nicholas had the honor of receiving Kate 
Douglas Smith's first article, written at the 
age of eighteen, and for it donated the sum 
of one hundred and fifty dollars. At the 
time it was composed, she was studying 
methods of the kindergarten under the 
celebrated Emma Marshall in California, 
and the story, " Half a Dozen House- 
keepers," was relative to this interesting 
work. To California she had moved after 
the death of her stepfather, and here she 
was teaching in the Santa Barbara College 
194 



KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN 

when called upon to organize the first free 
kindergarten west of the Rocky Mountains. 
The " Silver Street Kindergarten " in San 
Francisco was the outcome of her individual 
efforts and those of her sister. It was not 
only a great object lesson, but was the 
progenitor of fifty-six other similar schools, 
and the inspiration for similar efforts in 
Japan, Australia, New Zealand, British 
Columbia, and the Hawaiian Islands. The 
first year of its existence fifteen hundred 
people visited this novelty in primary edu- 
cation, and it did effective and telling work, 
for with the poorest of the city Mrs. Wiggin's 
energy was principally devoted, and the 
school was, — and is at the present time, — 
located in the slums of San Francisco. 

Upon the wall of one of the rooms which 
is a favorite with the children, is a lifelike 
portrait of the founder, underneath which 
are the following words : 

195 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

Kate Douglas Wiggest. 

In this room was born the first free kin- 
dergarten west of the Rocky Mountains. Let 
me have the happiness of looking down upon 
many successive groups of children sitting in 
these same seats. 

Shortly after the school had been placed 
upon a stable basis, its originator was 
united in marriage to Mr. Samuel Bradley 
Wiggin, a talented young lawyer. She 
now gave up teaching, but continued to 
give weekly lectures to the training class, 
and to visit the many kindergartens which 
had resulted from the spirit and individu- 
ality which she had infused into this move- 
ment. She thus unconsciously obtained a 
thorough knowledge of human nature, and 
as a result of her observations " The Story 
of Patsy " was written and printed in San 
Francisco. It was to raise money for her 
work, and three thousand copies were 
196 



KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN 

quickly disposed of without the publisher's 
aid. This was soon followed by " The 
Birds' Christmas Carol," a book equally 
popular and written with the same end in 
view. 

A few years later, in 1888, Mr. and 
Mrs. Wiggin moved to New York, where 
the friends of the brilliant authoress, who 
at that time was totally unknown to the 
East, urged upon her to offer the two books 
to an Eastern publisher. Acting upon 
their advice, she submitted " Pasty " and 
the " Carol " to Houghton, Mifflin & Com- 
pany, although it is not customary to re- 
print work that has already appeared 
elsewhere, and in book form. Their success 
under the stamp of this great New England 
house, was exceptional. 

The children of " The Birds' Christmas 
Carol " have endeared Kate Douglas Wiggin 
to thousands in America and this is her most 

197 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

popular work in Great Britain. It has been 
translated into Japanese, French, German, 
and Swedish, and has also been put into 
raised type for the blind. 

Her next publication, the story of "Timo- 
thy's Quest," had an interesting beginning, 
for it originated from the unsuspecting 
remark of a little child, who, in speaking 
of a certain house, quite wittily remarked, 
"I think they need some babies there." 
This Mrs. Wiggin remembered, and jotted 
down in her notebook : " needing babies." 
Soon afterwards the story of little Timothy 
appeared. It is a favorite in Denmark, has 
found its way into a Swedish edition, and has 
also been published in the Tauchnitz series. 
" Polly Oliver's Problem" was next writ- 
ten, and has been highly praised by Rudyard 
Kipling, who considers Polly Oliver the 
most delightful heroine in English fiction. 
It has likewise been translated into several 
198 



KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN 

foreign languages, and is one of a collec- 
tion of her books, with unique illustrations, 
corresponding to the life of the country in 
which they have been published. 

Mr. Wiggin died soon after leaving San 
Francisco, and his wife, who was separated 
from her interesting employment in Cali- 
fornia, threw herself with great energy into 
the kindergarten movement in the city, 
which, at the time, was absorbing much 
popular attention, and was the subject of 
considerable agitation in the newspapers. 
In order to further the interests of her 
work, she was eventually enticed to read 
from her own books, and at this was most 
successful. Her interpretation of her own 
characters is full of taste and feeling, and 
her reading has always been for purposes 
of a purely philanthropic nature, and espe- 
cially for her own pet cause, the introduc- 
tion of kindergartens ; an object for which 

199 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

she still works with untiring zeal and con- 
tinued interest. Apropos of her affection 
for literature, she has characteristically re- 
marked that she would rather write a story 
for the mere love of the creative work 
than for the most exorbitant pay. 

When a very young child she was brought 
up at the quiet and secluded little hamlet 
of Hollis, Maine, and since her return to 
the East has completed most of her literary 
work at a rambling old-fashioned house 
called "Quilleote," — for those summers 
which have not been passed in foreign 
travel, have been spent in the seclusion of 
this quaint family mansion. The house 
itself is similar to many New England 
homesteads, for it is of colonial architecture, 
with broad eaves, and surrounded by grace- 
ful elms. Its situation is upon a slight emi- 
nence, from which one can well view the fer- 
tile valleys that stretch in front, and, in the 
200 



KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN 

distance, the undulating foot-hills of Mt. 
Washington. 

A glance into her sanctum upon the 
second floor shows that here is a literary 
workman who dearly loves order, for every 
detail shows neatness and exactitude. In- 
teresting gifts and souvenirs are scattered 
about, together with many tributes 
from admirers in various and far- distant 
lands. The windows overlook a broad 
plot of grass, studded with graceful trees, 
where, from May till after nesting time, 
robins, orioles, blue-birds, and many other 
songsters, hold high and joyous carnival. 
But a short distance away, at the foot of a 
precipitous bank, the Saco river flows 
quietly towards the sea — an ideal spot, 
in fact, for delicate creations of the imagi- 
nation. The " Pleasant River " in " Tim- 
othy's Quest" is this winding stream, and 
many of the scenes and descriptions in "The 

201 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

Village Watch Tower" were taken from 
this quiet neighborhood. 

Since her marriage to Mr. George Chris- 
topher Riggs, in 1895, Mrs. Riggs has spent 
much time abroad, and has become closely 
associated with the British Isles, for, al- 
though no Anglomaniac, she is very fond 
of the English people, and has many warm 
friends across the Atlantic. "Penelope's 
English Experiences " was an excellent 
portrayal of her own impressions among 
them; and from life in Edinburgh, spring- 
times in the Highlands, and summer in the 
fertile Lowlands, grew " Penelope's Pro- 
gress," a book widely read and as much 
appreciated and laughed over as heartily 
in the land o' the heather as it has been in 
America. During this time, Ireland had 
only now and again received a flying visit, 
and at rare intervals, but as the public 
began to clamor for an Irish " Penelope," 
202 



KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN 

to complete the series, in the summer of 
1900 Mrs. Wiggin made a long journey to 
the Isle of Erin, and as a result we had 
the extraordinary and humorous " Penel- 
ope's Irish Experiences." It is said that 
when an English author heard of the pro- 
posed visit he expressed his hearty approval 
upon patriotic grounds, with the witty re- 
mark that, if the projected book remained 
unwritten, Ireland would for once have a 
real grievance, and questions would be 
asked in the House which Mr. Balfour 
would find it difficult to answer. 



203 



-:% 







GERTRUDE ATHERTON. 



GERTRUDE ATHERTON 



^^^-*EN years ago the name of Ger- 
m trade Atherton had a remote place 
-*- in American literature. What 
place does the name occupy to-day ? 

It is really hard to say. One critic has 
boldly likened her to George Eliot ; an- 
other has spoken of her as a " literary 
experimenter on generally unfortunate 
subjects." Of one thing we are certain : 
the reading public takes a lively interest 
in her books. 

Probably Mrs. Atherton would wish to be 
judged by " Senator North." That story, to 
be sure, appeared during a period of flamboy- 
ant advertising, when many books were 
expanded balloon-like — some of them to 
explode ignominiously. Let us see what 

205 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

sort of judgment was passed on the author 
of " Senator North." 

The critic who saw in her another George 
Eliot said : " Mrs. Atherton ... is a real 
writer in every sense of the word. She is 
as born to tell stories as the men who 
made the 'Arabian Nights,' and she has 
that rare power of evoking a living human 
being with a stroke or two, — with almost 
the mere mention of a name. However she 
may elaborate a character later on, we have 
never to wait for that elaboration to realize 
her heroes and heroines. Like a clever 
hostess she has a gift for making them 
really 'known' to the reader by little 
more than saying Miss So-and-So, or she 
will start off with a bit of dialogue that 
subtly sets two people before you in less 
than a page. Then she has command of 
a spontaneous, direct, supple and pointed 
prose style, which is entirely free from 
206 



GERTRUDE ATHERTON 

affectation . . . She is one of the wittiest of 
modern writers, but the wit is the crack- 
ling of the superabundant electricity of her 
brain and not that paradoxical jigging of 
the mind which is one of the warnings 
of cerebral paralysis. She is 'smart,' of 
course, at times, but all wit is sometimes 
that. More than any living writer I can 
think of, her wit reminds me, in its essen- 
tial quality, of Mr. George Meredith — 
though superficially, it lacks the manner- 
isms which occasionally obscure the calm 
spaces of that great wisdom. Real wit 
flashes out of the full conquering mind, as 
real laughter ripples from a full happy 
heart, like wine out of a bottle." 

Another opinion — possibly a minority 
opinion — handed down, characterized 
" Senator North " as " a somewhat hysteri- 
cal study of Washington life." The judge 
passed over the literary aspects of the case, 

207 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

however, and differed with Mrs. Atherton 
on sociological points. 

It has been thus for the last six years. 
We doubt that any other American roman- 
cist divides the critics into two camps so 
regularly and so resistlessly. Of the profit- 
able faculty of exciting critical disputes Mrs. 
Atherton is one of the largest possessors. 

During the reign of " Senator North " 
we met the suggestion that an Atherton 
" birthday book " might be compiled. 

Here are a few quotations, taken at ran- 
dom from " Senator North," that illustrate 
the author's wit and wisdom : 

" Betty (the heroine — of course you re- 
member Betty Madison) had been educated 
by private tutors, then taken abroad for 
two years to France, Germany and Italy, 
in order, as she herself observed, to make 
the foreign attache* feel more at ease when 
he proposed." 
208 



GERTRUDE ATHERTON 

" We are none of us taken long for what 
we are not." 

" Betty thought the women very nice, 
but less interesting than the men, possibly 
because they were women." 

" The good in human nature predomi- 
nates." 

" Washington had a brain of ice, and 
his ideal of American propriety was frozen 
within it." 

" Women make a god of what they can- 
not understand in a man. If he has a bad 
temper they think of him as a dominant 
personality." 

" Her husband, brilliant and charming, 
had possessed a set of affections too rest- 
less and ardent to confine themselves 
within the domestic limits. His wife had 
buried him with sorrow, but with a deep 
sigh of relief that for the future she could 
mourn him without protest." 

209 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

" You always have prided yourself," re- 
marks Betty, " that I am intellectual, and 
so I am in the flabby ' well-read ' fashion. I 
feel as if my brain had been a mausoleum 
for skeletons and mummies." 

Frankly, we discover nothing in Mrs. 
Atherton to warrant crowning her with 
the laurels worn by George Eliot. As we 
have already said, " Senator North " and 
its predecessors all stirred up more or less 
controversy, sometimes social, as in the 
case of "American Men and English 
Women," but more often literary. For 
strictly within the limits of literary criti- 
cism stands the matter of choice of a sub- 
ject; and even her staunchest admirers 
would not claim that the Calif ornian writer 
has been very happy in the choice of sub- 
jects. By subjects we mean especially, 
characters, of which, perhaps, the most 
unfortunate is the young woman in "A 
210 



GERTRUDE ATHERTON 

Daughter of the Vine." Admitted too by 
some of her most enthusiastic adherents is 
the fact that Mrs. Atherton's genius is a 
variable quality. " She is unequal, of 
course," remarks one, "but seeing that 
every real writer that ever lived has been 
* unequal,' and the greatest most unequal, 
it is a weak concession to modern phases 
of criticism even to mention that universal 
limitation." 

Yes, Mrs. Atherton is "unequal," indeed. 
Inequality — if that be the word — is promi- 
nent in her intellectual make-up. Her 
writings fit the description of her move- 
ments — uncertain, impetuous. One day 
she is penning a chapter to fascinate her 
friends and stagger the poor literary gen- 
tly ; the next day she is airing her opinions 
in the columns of a yellow journal. 

Mrs. Atherton was born in the Rincon 
Hill quarter of San Francisco in 1857. 

211 



LITTLE PILGRI MAGES 

Her mother was the daughter of Stephen 
Franklin, a descendant of the immortal 
Benjamin's youngest brother, John. Ste- 
phen Franklin left Oxford, N. Y., when he 
was a young man and went to New Or- 
leans, where, after having amassed a large 
fortune, he was almost ruined by a false 
partner. He then moved from New Or- 
leans to Central America and later to 
California, where before long he became 
influential. When his daughter, who had 
been educated at Spingler Institute, in 
New York City, arrived in California, she 
was hailed as the most beautiful girl in 
the country. She married Thomas L. 
Horn, a native of Stonington, Conn., who 
was a prominent citizen of San Francisco 
and a member of the historical Vigilant 
Committee. 

Gertrude attended various small private 
schools for a time ; afterwards she was a 
212 



GERTRUDE ATHERTON 

pupil at St. Mary's Hall, Benicia, Cali- 
fornia, and at Sayre Institute, Lexington, 
Ky. But delicate health kept her away 
from school a great deal, and thus she 
came to enjoy the tutelage of her grand- 
parents. At the age of four she was 
taught reading and spelling by her grand- 
mother. Her grandfather, Mr. Franklin, 
who meantime had established the first 
newspaper of San Francisco, The Golden 
Era, possessed the largest private library 
in the State, and therein Gertrude was free 
to browse before she entered her 'teens. 
It is not to be wondered at that her mind 
had an early development ; that it acquired 
some masculinity and considerable origi- 
nality ; that it formed a taste for strange- 
flavored literature. And there was an 
abundance of that kind of literature in 
the library — books that had come down 
from generation to generation. We can 

213 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

trace back to this juvenile independence, 
this mingling of youth with old age, many 
of the author's idiosyncrasies. Although 
the Greek and Latin classics were in the 
library, we have been informed that Ger- 
trude derived her knowledge of ancient lit- 
erature mostly from translations. For this 
Emerson would have applauded her — and 
Gladstone scolded her. 

Gertrude still had two years of school 
before her when she married George Henry 
Bowen Atherton, of Menlo Park, Califor- 
nia, a Chilean by birth, as was his mother, 
but an American on his father's side. At 
the time of the marriage the Athertons, 
socially, were the leading family of Cali- 
fornia. 

Of the beginning of her literary career 

Mrs. Atherton has informed us : "I began 

to write, or rather to compose, which took 

then the form of spinning astonishing 

214 



GERTRUDE ATHERTON 

yarns about my daily doings, when I was 
at some tender age, and when I went to 
school I remember the big girls gave me 
blank books in which to write stories for 
them. The first story I published, shortly 
after I married, was called l The Ran- 
dolphs of Redwoods,' and was the same 
fundamentally as 'A Daughter of the Vine.' 
It was published in the San Francisco Ar- 
gonaut. The name of my first published 
book — although I should like all my an- 
cient and amateur efforts to rest decently 
in their graves — was ' What Dreams May 
Come,' which came out in 1888. Then 
came ' Hermia Suydam,' < Los Cerritos,' 
4 The Doomswoman,' ' A Whirl Asun- 
der,' 'Patience Sparhawk and Her Times,' 
4 His Fortunate Grace,' <• American Wives 
and English Husbands,' 'The Calif or- 
nians,' 'A Daughter of the Vine,' and 
< Senator North.' " 

215 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

At the age of fifteen, we are told, she 
wrote a play, which was acted at St. Mary's 
Hall, Benicia, Cal. 

It was Mrs. Atherton's early purpose to 
exploit the romance of the juvenile age of 
the far West. She went about her task 
wisely and energetically. There was a 
temptation to depend upon the more or less 
mythical tradition which from time to 
time found its way into the San Francisco 
newspapers, but Mrs. Atherton put this 
aside and went straight to headquarters. 
They say that she made her residence in 
the old adobe settlements, and with sharp- 
ened eyes and ears, mixed with the sur- 
viving Spanish pioneers. For they, too, 
were pioneers, those hardy, brownfaced 
men and women from over the sea — 
pioneers no less than the Americans who 
pushed on farther north, even to the shores 
of the Columbia. And though their his- 
216 



GERTRUDE ATHERTON 

tory has less of the strenuous in it than 
that of the resolute state-makers who fol- 
lowed Lewis and Clark, still it has as much 
of the picturesque and of the romantic. 
Out of these experiences Mrs. Atherton 
wrote " Before the Gringo Came," which 
was published in 1893. Her first books 
were as rounds of the ladder. " Patience 
Sparhawk" finally brought her into promi- 
nence. We mean literary prominence. 
Her sharp comments on Anglo-American 
society had elevated her to the distinction 
of a subject of public controversy. 

Naturally enough, Mrs. Atherton's popu- 
larity was first established in the West ; 
and it is the West that up to to-day has been 
truest to her. It is in the West that one 
still meets such a remark as this, for in- 
stance : " But, whatever her shortcomings, 
Mrs. Atherton is the buoyant possessor of 
three important qualities of the novelist — 

217 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

the novelist, that is, pure and simple : 
She compels one to read on, she can tell a 
story, and she creates characters — and all 
these things she does, not because she 
tries, but because she cannot help it." 

We still meet readers — and many readers, 
by the way, are persons of superlatively 
fine judgment — who prefer " Patience 
Sparhawk and Her Times, " which was 
published in 1897, to all the other Ather- 
ton books. Certainly, previous to " Sena- 
tor North," it was the novelist's most 
ambitious and most praiseworthy effort. 
It came within an ace of being a literary 
phenomenon. For it must be remembered 
that in her youth, Mrs. Atherton missed 
many of the advantages enjoyed by the 
average girl. San Francisco, to be sure, 
was not without a strong literary atmos- 
phere ; nor was it without the appearances 
of polite society (vide Bret Harte's "Under 
218 



GERTRUDE ATHERTON 

the Redwoods "). But Gertrude had been 
pent-up, immured, and she had been fed 
mostly at the old-fashioned classical table. 
We have been informed that, until her 
marriage, she had only the barest acquaint- 
ance with modern fiction, that is, we pre- 
sume, with American novels. This is 
much the same as if Claude Monet had in 
his youth been acquainted only with Peru- 
gino and Fra Angelico. Fancy an impres- 
sionist reared on such a diet ! 

But it was in Mrs. Atherton to write 
powerfully and originally — almost as pow- 
erfully and originally, sometimes, as any 
other woman among her contemporaries. 

After her husband's death, Mrs. Ather- 
ton crossed the continent to New York; 
then she spent some years abroad. She 
went abroad, she declares, rather bitterly, 
" to make my reputation, for the press and 
the literary powers here fought me per- 

219 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

sistently — I suppose because I was not a 
child of the regiment. Now a great many 
American publishers ask for my books." 

The press and the literary powers of the 
country may have fought her persistently, 
but they could not have fought her mali- 
ciously. She also declares that she thinks 
" with the advanced minority — which is 
precious small in this country." Such a 
declaration, coming from a woman, com- 
pels silence. Mrs. Atherton, by the way, 
is to return to Europe very soon. 

During the greater part of the year she 
has been engaged on a dramatized biog- 
raphy — as she calls it — of Alexander 
Hamilton. She says of it: "A novel is a 
pivotal thing. This is written with the 
sequence of biography, nothing omitted, 
not even funding, taxes and finance ! but 
the personalities carry off the tiresome sub- 
jects — to the average reader — and there 
220 



GERTRUDE ATHERTON 

is no great amount of detail." She will 
also edit a volume of Hamilton's letters ! 
The dramatized biography is due to appear 
early this season under the title of " The 
Conqueror." 



221 




Photo by Chancellor, Dublin. 

JOHN OLIVER HOBBES. 



JOHN OLIVER HOBBES 
(MRS. CRAIGIE) 



£^*OHN OLIVER HOBBES is the 

# pseudonym of Mrs. Pearl Mary 
I Teresa Craigie. It appeared first in 
1891, in the Pseudonym Library, over the 
study entitled " Some Emotions and a 
Moral." It is related that the first publisher 
to whom that story was offered accepted it 
on condition that the author find another 
title and make other lesser changes. She 
refused to make a single change, and the 
work finally went to a more courageous 
— and, we may say, — longer-headed pub- 
lisher. "The author proposes and the 
publisher disposes," is not an e very-day 
maxim. 

Mrs. Craigie (doubtless many readers 

223 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

will be surprised to learn it) was born in 
Boston, Mass., on Nov. 3, 1867. Her 
mother's maiden name was Laura Hor- 
tense Arnold. Her father, John Morgan 
Richards, is the son of the Rev. James 
Richards, D.D., the founder of Auburn 
Theological Seminary, New York. Pearl 
was educated first privately, by tutors, 
then in Paris, and then in London, where, 
for a good many years, her father has 
chosen to reside. In London she was a pu- 
pil at University College. There she stud- 
ied the ancient classics enthusiastically; 
and there she attracted the attention of 
the well-known Professor Goodwin, by 
whose advice, later, she took up literature 
as a profession. 

In 1887, at the age of nineteen, she was 

married to Mr. Reginald Walpole Craigie, 

a member of a well-established English 

family. Four years after the marriage she 

224 



JOHN OLIVER HOBBES 

left her husband, taking with her their 
child, John Churchill Craigie, who was 
born in August, 1890; and in 1895 the 
separation culminated in a divorce. Since 
then Mrs. Craigie and her son have lived 
with her parents at 56 Lancaster Gate, W., 
London. Her amusements are music and 
chess. 

This, in brief, is the biography of one of 
the most brilliant figures in contemporary 
English literature. And we hasten to claim 
her for America, for, notwithstanding her 
long residence abroad, notwithstanding her 
English interests and associations, she is at 
heart, we hear, " a very staunch American." 
But, in the first place, she is an intellec- 
tual cosmopolite. Her gifts have brought 
back to her a welcome from wherever men 
and women read English; and to-day 
English is the language of the four corners 
of the globe. 

225 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

In one respect, Mrs. Craigie reminds us 
of her greatest hero, Robert Orange. We 
do not need to lift the veil of domesticity 
to form the opinion that married life half- 
stifled her ambition. She was not born to 
serve two masters. Orange was too sin- 
cere a man to take advantage of Parflete's 
death. His heart said "Rome," and to 
Rome he went ; and we can see him going, 
tranquilly yet determinedly. In some 
such manner, we fancy, Mrs. Craigie must 
have gone back to her father's house. 
Literally, too, she went to Rome, for she 
became a Roman Catholic in 1892, the 
year following the separation from her 
husband. 

The year 1891 was doubly momentous. 
It saw not only her departure from under 
her husband's roof, but also the publica- 
tion of her first book, "Some Emotions 
and a Moral." We have been informed 
226 



JOHN OLIVER HOBBES 

that eighty thousand copies were sold in a 
few weeks ; anyhow, it is a positive fact 
that the book was one of the sensations of 
the day. For a long while the reading 
public remained incredulous over the an- 
nouncement that the author was a woman. 
It was not merely the pseudonym, John 
Oliver Hobbes, that excited the incredu- 
lity ; it was also the form and the style of 
the book itself. 

Mrs. Craigie once remarked that women 
are at a disadvantage in picturing men in 
their relations one to the other, particu- 
larly in the intimate relations of the mess- 
room and the smoking-room, and she cited 
Jane Austen's consummate tact in eluding 
the difficulty by keeping men apart, or, 
rather, by keeping them in the society of 
women. It oftentimes demands consum- 
mate tact to enforce the realization of a 
limitation ; and in an artist the inability 

227 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

to paint things as they are seen is certainly 
a grave limitation. Of such a limitation the 
author of " Robert Orange " — we mention 
her most notable book — betrays no con- 
sciousness, for it is not in her. She affords us 
the enjoyment rather of consummate skill 
than of consummate tact. Therein she re- 
sembles, not Jane Austen, but George Eliot. 
At the same time, we remember that 
when " Robert Orange " was the rage, 
some critics charged Mrs. Craigie with a 
lack of the power of convincing. " This 
is a fanciful hero," they declared. " Can 
a man love a woman so humanly, so de- 
liriously as is herein depicted," asked one 
of them, " while being simultaneously 
drawn toward the monastic life ? " The 
novelist gave the best of answers — that 
Robert Orange was no mere production of 
the imagination, no embodiment of an idea, 
but a study from life. 
228 



JOHN OLIVER HOBBES 

The fact is, to make use of the novelist's 
expression, " Character is infinitely vari- 
ous, and the possibilities of action are in- 
exhaustible. When a fictitious personage 
does or says an incredible thing — of course 
I am not speaking of fairy tales, but of fic- 
tion that bears some relation to fact — it 
is incredible, not in the abstract, as it were, 
but because it is wrongly correlated to the 
individual character. Speaking for my- 
self, I hate and distrust plausibility. No 
writer is so little plausible as Balzac. His 
people are as full of surprises as our own 
most intimate friends ! " 

We recall the comment that Mrs. 
Craigie's pages are filled with such subtle 
observations, straight philosophy and shin- 
ing epigrams that they must be read slowly 
to be enjoyed. They are indeed, as a rule, 
pages relishable to the last word. Their 
psychology is always interesting and some- 

229 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

times deeply affecting. They are pages 
not made to snit Marion Crawford's dictum, 
that a novel should be mere entertainment 
— assuming that his definition of enter- 
tainment goes no further than shivers and 
laughs. They who have found Mr. Craw- 
ford's " In the Palace of the King " the 
best of entertainment may have gone to 
sleep over Mrs. Craigie's " The School for 
Saints." Plausibility is not always to be 
distrusted. How prolix to such persons 
must have seemed the pages describing the 
journey of the hero and the heroine of 
''Robert Orange" to St. Malo. Orange 
had suddenly plunged from irresolution 
into marriage, and, as he looked down on 
Brigit's face in the starlight, his secret 
ideals returned to trouble him. The 
author suddenly plunges into the philoso- 
phy of the situation : 

"Men's designs are never so indefinite 
230 



JOHN OLIVER HOBBES 

and confused as when they meet with no 
outward resistance. A close attack has 
proved the salvation of most human wills 
and roused the energy of many drooping 
convictions. It is seldom good that one 
should enter into any vocation very easily, 
sweetly, and without strife. The best 
apprenticeships, whether ecclesiastical or 
religious, or civil or military, or political 
or artistic, are never the most calm. 
Whether we study the lives of saints or the 
lives of those distinguished in any walk of 
human endeavor where perfection, in some 
degree or other, has been at least the goal, 
we always find that the first years of the 
pursuit have been one bitter history of 
temptations, doubts, despondencies, strug- 
gles, and agonizing inconsistencies of vo- 
lition. To natures cold originally, or 
extinguished by a false asceticism, many 
seeming acts of sacrifice are but the subtle 

231 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

indulgence of that curious selfishness which 
is not the more spiritual because it is inde- 
pendent of others, or the less repulsive 
because it is most contented in its isolation 
from every responsibility. A renunciation 
means the deliberate putting away of some- 
thing keenly loved, anxiously desired, or 
actually possessed; it does not mean a 
well-weighed acceptance of the lesser, 
rather than the greater, trials of life." 

All this in a breath, we may say ; and yet, a 
dozen lines further on, begins another page 
of philosophical speculations. Mrs. Craigie 
is not content to paint the body : she must 
paint the soul also. For the most part 
they are the speculations met on the road 
from Aristotle to Cardinal Newman; but, 
for the most part, too, they have been 
freshened and garnished in the novelist's 
analytical mind. Her analytical faculties 
seem to have undergone a large development 
232 



JOHN OLIVER HOBBES 

during the period of her domestic trouble 
and religious doubts. It was then, for the 
first time, that her mind came into contact 
with the minds of the great Christian psy- 
chologists. " Has it ever struck you," she 
asked a visitor casually, " that the Church 
of Rome, which alone among the churches 
of Western Europe enjoins and enforces con- 
tinual examinations of conscience, is the real 
creator of modern analytical fiction ? The 
Fathers of the Church are the fathers of 
psychology. St. Augustine, St. Thomas 
Aquinas, St. Bernard, and Abelard — where 
will you find subtler soul-searching than in 
their writings?" 

In soul-searching, the author of "Love 
and the Soul-Hunters" — an appropriate 
title for the moment — is not excelled by 
any of her contemporaries, not even by the 
chirurgical dare-devil, Gabriele d' Annunzio. 
Yet she has also written passages of heart- 

233 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

touching tenderness, nor is she above 
smiles and little satires. Indeed, to men- 
tion love, who that ever reads it can soon 
forget the impassioned confession of Lady 
Sara-Louise-Tatiana- Valerie De Treverell : 
" . . . I never say my prayers, because I 
cannot say them, but I love somebody, too. 
Whenever I hear his name I could faint. 
When I see him I could sink into the 
ground. At the sight of his handwriting 
I grow cold from head to foot, I tremble, 
my heart aches so that it seems breaking 
in two. I long to be with him, yet when 
I am with him I have nothing to say. I 
have to escape and be miserable all alone. 
He is my thought all day : the last before 
I sleep, the first when I awake. I could 
cry, and cry, and cry. I try to read, and I 
remember not a word. I like playing best, 
for then I can almost imagine that he is 
listening. But when I stop playing and 
234 



JOHN OLIVER HOBBES 

look round, I find myself in an empty 
room. It is awful ! I call his name ; no 
one answers. I whisper it; still no an- 
swer. I throw myself on the ground, and 
I say, ' Think of me ! think of me ! you 
shall, you must, you do think of me ! ' It 
is great torture and a great despair. Per- 
haps it is a madness, too. But it is my 
way of loving. I want to live while I 
live. If I knew for certain that he loved 
me — me only — the joy, I think, would 
kill me. Love ! Do you know, poor little 
angel, what it means? Sometimes it is a 
curse." 

It is more than plausible that Pensee, 
who had to listen to this, was really " shak- 
ing like some small flower in a violent 
gale." 

Lately Mrs. Craigie has done some writ- 
ing for the stage. Without question the 
best of her plays is " The Ambassador," 

235 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

which fulfils Mr. Howells's ideal, for like 
one of the best of Oscar Wilde's plays or 
Mr. Pinero's, it is as lustrous between 
covers as in the theatre. But all in all, our 
heroine's career as a playwright has not 
been a flattering experience, and we were 
not unprepared for her recent statement 
that " the public does not want to think in 
the theatre, or to have the serious aspects of 
life forced upon its attention. What it 
chiefly wants is flattery," and so on, in the 
traditional manner of the fallen idol. 
Fortunately, perhaps, for the reputation of 
Alexander, he had no other worlds to 
conquer. 

" Love and the Soul-Hunters " is the 
novel on which Mrs. Craigie has been 
working lately. She writes us that she 
also has in mind a serial story for Harper's 
and a play. 

The novelist is described as " a slender 
236 



JOHN OLIVER HOBBES 

woman, not very tall, but very well built. 
Her face, eyes and hair are dark, and she 
has a wonderful sort of personal magnetism 
which, her friends believe, would have 
served her well had she gone on the stage." 
She has occasionally gone to a convent to 
write, for her temperament demands tran- 
quillity. When in London she writes in 
the library, which is on the first floor of 
the Richards house. In the summer most 
of her work is done at Steephill Castle, 
Isle of Wight. 

She sits for hours ruminating on her 
plots, then she writes, rapidly, accurately. 
Literally she transfers the story chapter by 
chapter from her mind to the paper on the 
table before her. In society she is said to 
have been admired — mostly for her intel- 
lectual charms — since her school days. 
Although not robust in health — she gen- 
erally spends the winter in the south of 

237 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

Europe or in Egypt — she does an amount 
of work that quite nullifies the effect of 
her remark to Mr. Archer (" Real Conver- 
sations," in the Critic) that "in all our 
speculations upon the differences of faculty 
in the two sexes, we are rather apt to for- 
get the effect of the fundamental difference 
in mere bodily power of endurance." 



238 




"op right. 1890, by G. W. Varney, Chicago. 

LILIAN BELL. 




ELIZABETH STUAKT PHELPS. 



LILIAN BELL 
(MRS. BOGUE) 



LILIAN BELL (Mrs. Arthur Hoyt 
Bogue) may justly take pride in 
her originality and her enthusiasm. 
She is one of the most forceful figures 
in American literature. What she writes 
is as far from conventionality, as the sun is 
distant from the earth. She is young, and, 
like every other original and enthusiastic 
person, she has her faults — faults technical 
as well as temperamental. But we must 
credit her with the purpose of living to 
learn, and though, as in her best work, 
" The Expatriates," there is some dross 
mingled with the gold, the dross will all be 
smelted out some day. Then she will move 
a round higher on the ladder. 

Her writings largely reflect her own ex- 

239 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

periences and her own opinions. For in- 
stance, two years ago, in Boston, speaking 
of the United States army, she said : 

" The men are splendidly brave, intelli- 
gent and efficient so far as the little force 
goes ; but the minute an army officer gets 
away from the barracks he puts on civilian's 
dress, and that, to my mind, is entirely 
wrong. There ought to be a rule compel- 
ling officers and men in our army to wear 
their uniforms at all times. This would 
keep the army in the people's minds, and 
make them realize that it is a real thing and 
a part of the nation that they can be proud 
of . . . . You never see army officers on the 
streets or in public places in uniform ; they 
act as if they were ashamed of it. I am 
proud of our army and I think we ought 
to make more of it than we do. If I were a 
man there 'd be no other career on earth for 
me. My brother is an officer, and it is the 
240 



LILIAN BELL 



delight of my heart that he is permanently 
in the service, and employed in the defence 
of my beautiful America, and that he will 
live his whole life under the shadow of the 
flag." (Her brother, to whom, by the way, 
her latest story, "Sir John and the Ameri- 
can Girl," is dedicated, is a lieutenant in 
the 17th Infantry, U. S. A., now stationed 
in the Philippines.) 

Rose Hollenden expresses virtually the 
same sentiments in " The Expatriates." 
Indeed, in that singularly interesting and 
strangely abused novel you will find many 
traces of the author's experiences and opin- 
ions. You may remember the episode at the 
reception given by the American ambassa- 
dor to France, Mr. Sharp : 

" But suddenly Rose saw the tall, bent 
figure of the American ambassador ap- 
proaching. As he neared the Marquise 
d'Auteil, she turned from Prince Orion , 

241 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

and, mistaking Mr. Sharp for a servant, 
she said, in a distinct tone which everybody 
heard : 

" Garc,on, call the carriage of the Mar- 
quise d'Auteil ! " 

The incident took us back to what Lil- 
ian Bell had said in an interview, long be- 
fore the publication of the book, — when 
she was at work on it, no doubt, — that "our 
ambassadors ought to have a uniform or 
some sort of dress to distinguish them from 
the common herd." Superficially the sen- 
timent is not democratic ; but it was the 
author's sense of dignity that spoke. She 
related how she attended an important ball 
at the French capital. " The ambassadors 
from other nations appeared in splendid 
uniforms. They looked like somebodies. 
Even little Portugal, and Brazil, and Peru, 
and Mexico, were represented by men who 
kept up the dignity and the importance of 
242 



LILIAN BELL 



their states ; while the ambassador of the 
United States could not be told from the 
waiters, except that they were better 
dressed. It is outrageous. No wonder they 
despise us abroad." 

Times have changed, and European tem- 
pers, too, we may be permitted to remark. 
But a comparison of Mrs. Bogue's writings 
and sayings is forced upon the critic who 
would do justice to her work, inasmuch as 
it generally shows her to be consistent. 
We sincerely believe that she is a woman 
who practices what she preaches. She is 
not frivolous and imaginative ; she is decid- 
edly serious and intellectual. 

She inherits her lively patriotism. Her 
father, Maj. William W. Bell, served his 
country gallantly during the Civil War, 
and so did her grandfather, Gen. Joseph 
Warren Bell, who, though a Southerner, 
sold and freed his slaves before the war, 

243 



LITTLE PILGKIMAGES 

brought his family North, and organized 
the 13th Illinois Cavalry. Among the 
Virginian patriots at the time of the Revo- 
lution was her great - great - grandfather, 
Captain Thomas Bell. 

Lilian Bell was born in Chicago in 1867, 
but she was brought up in Atlanta. At an 
early age she took pleasure in writing. 
She once said : 

" I wrote my first story at the age of eight. 
Later, when I was in school, there was a 
certain girl whom I loved, and still love, 
devotedly. She so detested writing essays 
that she would let her general average drop 
twenty per cent., for she always got zero for 
being unprepared. She was older than I 
by two years, but a little mite of a thing, 
and I worshiped her so much that I used 
to write the essays for her. Usually I 'd 
ask her, about two hours before they had 
to be handed in, 'Written your essay?' 
244 



LILIAN BELL 



No, she couldn 't write it. ' What's your 
subject? ' Then I would write it for her; 
and I used to take the keenest enjoyment 
in writing it as she would have written it, 
in looking at it from her point of view, and 
making the thing sound like her. It used 
to be a source of great glee to me that I 
could get her a hundred every time, though 
I couldn 't always get that much for myself ; 
they marked according to supposed ability. 
Later I wrote various novels of interminably 
long chapters, and read them to four or five 
wondering girls who used to come to my 
house Fridays to stay over Sunday. No, 
those were never published. My mother 
burned them, together with a voluminous 
diary I thought I was keeping. She 's been 
ever so good to me in heaps of ways! 
Still later I began writing for a newspaper. 
I was getting the magnificent sum of eight 
dollars a column, and was n't spending a cent 

245 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

of it — just saving it to look at. One day 
an old friend said to me : * Are you writing 
much now ? ' I said : ' Yes, and every line 
I write gets printed.' < That 's too bad,' said 
he ; ' I 'm very sorry.' < Why, what do you 
mean?' said I. 'If everything you write 
gets printed, it shows you 're not advancing.' 
That was startling. I stopped writing en- 
tirely after that, and read — oh, how I de- 
voured books and magazines, trying to see 
how people that could write did things, try- 
ing to get hold of the elements of style, 
trying, in short, to master English. 

" I began to write things and sent them 
out, and they always came back promptly. I 
did n't care ; I sent them out again and kept on 
writing. . . . One day an idea for a story 
occurred to me, and I wrote ' The Heart of 
Brier Rose' and sent it to the Harpers, who 
accepted it and asked for more. Soon after 
that I wrote ' The Love Affairs,' and sent 
246 



LILIAN BELL 



that to them. They accepted it, and since 
then everything I 've written has been en- 
gaged beforehand. But don't imagine I 
work by contract. I never could and never 
will engage to do a certain piece of work in 
a given time. There 's merely an under- 
standing that if I write a story and send it 
along they '11 take it." 

Zola himself could not desire a more flat- 
tering arrangement. 

Mrs. Bogue was twenty-six when, in 1893, 
" The Love Affairs of an Old Maid " was 
published. Her wit was green then, but her 
uncommon sense of humor was ripe. She is 
too serious, too objective, to be a first-water 
humorist; nor has she ever had a desire to 
be one, we understand. 

A Chicago writer has given us a story 
illustrating Lilian Bell's characteristic sense 
of humor. It seems that soon after her grad- 
uation from Dearborn Seminary, Chicago, 

247 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

she was invited to read an essay on " Literary 
Women of Germany in the Middle Ages " at 
an alumnae entertainment. Lilian discovered 
a scarcity of material, and she so reported. 
u y er y well, Miss Bell, I see you do not care 
to accommodate me," said the principal, " I 
shall have to disappoint our guests." " No, 
no," protested the young graduate. " If you 
insist upon it I will do the best I can." The 
story goes on: 

" So Miss Bell wrote a most remarkable 
account of the literary women of Germany 
in the Middle Ages. There was a score of 
them, all of surprising brilliancy. They 
guided not only the culture of the country, 
but the politics, and the social life of the 
court. Nothing of importance happened 
without their participation. The most re- 
nowned of the group, after passing through 
all sorts of adventures, jumped through an 
open window, four stories up, attempting to 
248 



LILIAN BELL 



descend safely by using her umbrella as a 
parachute. The parachute failed to work. 
She was dashed to bits, and the miserable 
prince whose attentions had driven her to 
the fatal step, went away to war, threw him- 
self in the forefront of the battle and was 
killed. At judicious intervals in her essay 
Miss Bell inserted the names and meagre 
history of three literary women who had 
really existed. The composition was a great 
success. All the cultured guests, many of 
them members of Chicago's literary set, 
commended its erudition and its dramatic 
interest. 

"I knew you could give us something 
good if you only tried, my dear," said 
the lady principal, all smiles. Miss Bell 
then coolly announced that she had been 
trying her hand at romance, in the absence 
of facts." 

" Every book, that is, every real book," 

249 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

says Mrs. Bogue, "has in it something 
which the writer could not have helped 
putting into it, and which no one else 
could have put into it by main strength. 
One of the things I have cared about par- 
ticularly is to be an individual, not a mem- 
ber of a group or of a class. I think it 
is more worth while if your work is a thing 
of its own kind — if, in it, you are your- 
self, instead of being merely a woman 
who has done good work in common with 
others, along a certain line. I 'd rather 
elude classification ; I should hate to be 
pigeon-holed." 

Yet some critics have had the poor judg- 
ment to classify her as a writer of " light 
fiction" and of "summer literature." 

The reader will find an excellent sample 

of her vehement satire in the description 

in " The Expatriates " of the concert 

aboard the St. Louis. There is a moral as 

250 



LILIAN BELL 



well as fun in the discomfiture of the 
Americans that could not sing " The Star 
Spangled Banner." 

"It is queer," remarks the novelist, in 
discussing her work, " how differently 
books write themselves. The first chapter 
of * The Love Affairs ' is exactly like the 
first draft. It suited me. The first chap- 
ter of 4 A Little Sister to the Wilderness,' 
was written thirty-two times. That is the 
only one of my books that has been written 
from the outside, and it was the hardest to 
write. For other good reasons, I '11 never 
write another book except from the inside. 
Nobody has ever yet found out what I wrote 
<• The Under Side of Things ' for, not even 
a single critic. I don't believe anybody 
ever will, either. Probably I did not make 
it plain enough." 

In regard to her daily work Mrs. Bogue 
writes us : "I work every morning and 

251 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

generally manage to read one book a day 
— biographies and books of philosophy, 
which I often reread if they throw partic- 
ular light on characters. In my writing 
I am not so rapid. I sometimes rewrite a 
paragraph or chapter twenty or more 
times." She spent two years on " The 
Expatriates," her most noteworthy book, 
visiting Europe twice during that time and 
reviewing her work with men and women 
of trustworthy judgment. " The * white 
heat ' I am accused of," she says, "was 
sober morning judgment and the purest of 
motives, to instruct an American public 
distinguished by its ignorance of the sub- 
jects of which I wrote." 

In May, 1900, Lilian Bell's marriage to 
Mr. Arthur Hoyt Bogue of Chicago, gave 
rise to many a joke. The jokers were 
especially delighted to quote the blistering 
witticisms in " From a Girl's Point of 
252 



LILIAN BELL 



View." Here is a specimen of the com- 
ments that went the rounds of the press : 

" In < From a Girl's Point of View ' Miss 
Bell deplores and ridicules the man under 
thirty-five. She calls him raw, crude, un- 
formed, untrained, egotistical, and other 
uncomplimentary names. The fact that 
Mr. Bogue is several years under thirty- 
five, gives her views added piquancy." 

A short time ago Mr. and Mrs. Bogue 
moved to New York. 

From one who has met her we get this 
glimpse of the author : " She is a tall, fine- 
looking woman, with a superb carriage, 
though not a strong physique ; and she 
dresses stunningly, though a mere man 
would discover only that she was perfectly 
gowned." And she is said to have glorious 
eyes. 

Lilian Bell's readings have been enjoyed 
West and East, North and South ; and, as 

253 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

she wrote of Rose Hollenden, so we may 
write of her, that she knows "her own 
country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
from Seattle to Tampa." 



254 




RUTH McENERY STUART. 



KUTHMcENERY STUART 



^^T^^HE fact that a spirit of commer- 
m cialism is creeping into the old 
Latin or Creole quarter of New 
Orleans was well exemplified by the sign 
that a small bootmaker, who had evidently 
been studying the up-to-date conversational 
advertisements in the daily papers, re- 
cently hung over his door. Translated 
literally, it read: "Oh, my God! Shoes 
half soled for fifty cents ! " 

It is, however, the old, the picturesque, 
and the thoroughly lazy New Orleans of 
which Ruth McEnery Stuart has writ- 
ten, and it is with the " yaller gals," the 
Creoles, the plantation negroes, the " cun- 
nels " and the " majahs," that she is thor- 
oughly at home. It is true that she has 

255 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

touched upon places that have been 
thoroughly covered by others, for the 
whole theme of the southern negro and 
his surroundings has been well treated 
by George W. Cable, with his " Cajians " 
and Creoles ; by Thomas Nelson Page, 
with "Marse Channins'" devoted body- 
servant, and his Virginian field bards ; by 
Joel Chandler Harris, with his chronicles 
of "Brer Rabbit," "Brer Bar," and the 
lesser animals, and by Virginia Frazer 
Boyle, with her voudoo and devil tales ; 
but Mrs. Stuart has given us glimpses of 
this life that have been permeated with 
her own personality, and the possibilities 
among these archaic and most accessible 
people have been many. 

Perhaps the negro poet, Paul Lawrence 
Dunbar, of recent years has given us better 
and more sympathetic songs of the planta- 
tion life, which is so rapidly disappearing, 
256 



RUTH McENERY STUART 

than other expositors of southern scenes 
and scenery; but although Mrs. Stuart 
has not written voluminously, those poems 
and short stories which have, upon rare 
occasions, drifted into the different news- 
papers and periodicals, have shown an 
appreciation of the curious rhythm of the 
plantation song, and its innocent spirit and 
childish repetitions, which stamp them as 
truthful expositions of those unintellectual 
and simple minds that few Americans 
know well enough to interpret. 

What, in truth, could more faithfully 
exhibit the spirit of the ante-bellum darky 
than the poem called " Daddy Do-Funny," 
which only recently appeared in St. 
Nicholas ? " Ole Daddy Do-Funny," with 
his list of " miseries," is a typical planta- 
tion daddy. 

The author of such a truly valuable 
addition to American folk-song was bred 

257 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

in the very hotbed of negro superstition and 
voudoo worship. She was born at Avoy- 
elles parish, Louisiana, and was the 
daughter of a wealthy family of planters 
who had always been slaveholders, and 
were life-long residents of the State. In 
early childhood she was taken to New 
Orleans, where her father was in business, 
and there she was educated at public and 
private schools, and there remained until 
her marriage in 1879 to Alfred O. Stuart, 
who owned large cotton plantations in 
Arkansas. Of her married life she has re- 
cently informed a newspaper paragrapher: 
" During my married life I lived on my 
husband's plantation in Arkansas, and most 
of my negro character-studies have come 
from my association with the negroes 
while there. We lived right among them 
— there were hundreds of negroes to one 
white person. My Arkansas life covered 
258 






RUTH McENERY STUART 

about five years, from 1879 to late in 1883. 
Two plantations were owned by my hus- 
band, although we did not live on either of 
them, but in a little town near by, and I 
can see the darkies now, riding in on their 
mules, hitching them to the mulberry trees 
in our yard, sitting in rows upon our front 
steps, 'restin' ' and ' foolin' roun' ' generally. 
Some old 'aunty' would surely come walk- 
ing in every morning with a battered tin 
pail on her arm, filled with perfectly worth- 
less berries, gathered up by the wayside, 
not to sell, but ' ter swap fur jes a lee tie 
flour, please ma'am, an' a pinch er butter, 
honey, an' a couple er lumps er sugar, 
please ma'am, Mis' Stuart.' Then there 
was an old 'uncle,' who used to sit silently 
fishing all day long in a shallow pool, with 
his under lip stuck out phenomenally far, 
even for a negro's, who, when anyone asked 
him, < Say, uncle, what 's that you 've got 

259 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

in your mouth ? ' would reply laconically, 
* Wums,' and shut his tongue down upon 
his imprisoned bait again." 

Of her first literary endeavors she has 
also said : " I was never a great reader, but 
was more fond of people than books, 
though, I had my favorite authors, as 
every girl has — still, I was not a great 
reader. I have always felt interested in 
the common folk, but never thought seri- 
ously about writing them up until after 
my husband's death. It was in 1887 that 
I first thought about writing, and in 1888 
my first story was published. I sent two 
stories to the Harpers. It was in this 
way I wrote an anonymous letter to them, 
and in reply received a very pleasant note 
from Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, who 
afterward sent one of my stories to Profes- 
sor Sloane of the Princeton Review, and kept 
one for Harper's Magazine. The Prince- 
260 



RUTH McENERY STUART 

ton Revieiv thus happened to be the first 
magazine to print a story for me. 

" As to my writing dialect, I did not do 
it intentionally. I simply wrote dialect 
stories because when I demanded of my- 
self a story, it was the recollection of the 
negroes which made it possible for me to 
write it. I could not help writing dialect. 

" My characters are all drawn from 
imagination. I have found that in writing 
stories, facts or bits taken from life intact, 
hamper instead of help me. There is 
always a question as to the real incidents 
fitting naturally into a new situation. I 
always fancy I can see the stitches around 
the patch. Besides, is it not true that the 
real incident that suggests itself for use is 
apt to be attractive for its exceptional 
character? Hence it is not true to life. 
It was noticeable in life for this very rea- 
son. When it is put into a story, since it 

261 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

cannot be taken with its entire common- 
place setting, it loses its relative value — 
it 's out of drawing and false. 

" I try to devote the first half of each 
day to my desk, and this is my rule. My 
favorite work hours are those of the early 
morning, from about six to breakfast-time. 
As to my favorite authors of fiction — I 
might name George Eliot, George Mere- 
dith, and Victor Hugo: and among our 
own authors I esteem none more highly 
than Mary E. Wilkins and James Lane 
Allen; but it is difficult to select a few 
lights from a galaxy so brilliant that each 
of a score of names would be familiar to 
everyone. As to my literary ambitions — 
oh, don't ask me. I am now doing stories, 
and am in arrears with my engagements." 

Since the death of her husband, Mrs. 
Stuart has resided in New York City 
and here she has done most of her lite- 
262 



RUTH McENERY STUART 

rary work. A list of her books includes : 
"Moriah's Mourning"; " In Simpkins- 
ville " ; "A Golden "Wedding " ; » Carlot- 
ta's Intended " ; " Solomon Crow's Christ- 
mas Pockets " ; « The Story of Babette " ; 
" Sonny," and " Holly and Pizen." She 
is not only an indefatigable worker, but 
also a reader of considerable reputation, 
and, although not a professional elocution- 
ist or one of the modern " reciters," inter- 
prets her own writings with great vivacity 
and effect. " Her pictures of Louisiana 
life, both white and colored, are indeed the 
best we have," Charles Dudley Warner 
has said, " — truthful, humorous, and not 
seldom pathetic, but never overdrawn or 
sentimental. Not a little of her success in 
presenting them to an audience lies in her 
power to reproduce her characters in accent 
and dialect, and in such a manner that we 
see them as they really are." 

263 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

She is slender and graceful, and wears 
her dark-brown hair thrown softly back 
from her face in half-pompadour style, and 
has the delightful accent of the southland. 
Her hobby is to study mycology, and 
each year she finds several months' pleasure 
in the difficult pursuit of the one-legged 
mushroom. She is likewise engaged in the 
collection of aboriginal baskets, which rep- 
resent the feelings of both art and utility 
of half-civilized peoples in various parts of 
the world. A great many paragraphers 
have been pleased to comment upon her as 
being a " normal domestic woman," which 
is indeed what she really is, as she is an 
excellent housekeeper and likes to dabble 
in cookery and other arts of the household. 

Perhaps she has written nothing more 

thoroughly "coon" than "Uncle Ephe's 

Advice to Brer Rabbit," which faithfully 

demonstrates her ability as a chronicler 

264 



RUTH McENERY STUART 

of plantation echoes, and well exemplifies 
the poetic mind of the dense, but tuneful, 
negro of the cotton-field and the cane- 
brake. 

The lilt of 

Hoppit — lippit ! Bull-frog gait ! 
Hoppit — lippit — lippit — hoppit ! 
Goodness me, why don't you stop it? 

has in it the onomatopoetic quality of genu- 
ine barbaric verse. 

Mrs. Stuart's self-confessed lack of 
" bookish " traits is perhaps one secret 
of her success in her own field. She is 
versed in the study of the simple characters 
into whose lives she has so fully entered 
as no student of mere letters could be. 
The author of " Sonny " and the Simpkins- 
ville stories well deserves her creditable 
rank among the American writers of genre 
fiction. 

265 



1 



ANNA FARQUHAR. 



ANNA FARQUHAR 
(MRS. BERGENGREN) 



/" WAS twenty-two years old when I 
first went to Boston to visit the fam- 
ily of my father's eldest brother, Mr. 
John Allston, who at an early age there 
settled into business prosperity." 

Thus did a comparatively unknown 
writer, who passed by the name of Mar- 
garet Allston, introduce herself to the 
readers of the Ladies' Home Journal in a 
series of chapters called " Her Boston 
Experiences." She had something to say — 
something witty, something satirical, some- 
thing caustic. It was about baked beans, 
Beacon Hill, and the people who live 
near by ; and she said it under a name of 
gentle and truly puritanic simplicity, and 
quite in accord with the honest shafts of 

267 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

sarcasm she not only aimed at the dwellers 
of the Hub, but had before plunged, with 
satire quite as delicate and sharp, into that 
cosmopolitan assemblage of notables known 
as Washington society. 

"The Inner Experiences of a Cabinet 
Officer's Wife " had been a faithful picture 
of the complexity of ambitions, which the 
outsider who has eyes to see, ears to hear, 
and wit to appreciate, would be astonished 
to meet with at the Capital. It had been 
so true to life, in fact, that certain per- 
sonages began to remove the beam in their 
own eyes, and, with delicate introspection, 
to question themselves and wonder if some 
of the characters were not within their own 
lives, and, as nothing interests the world 
(especially the feminine world) more than 
gossip or than skeleton-in-the-closet his- 
tory, it became immediately essential to 
that great assemblage which is directly 
268 



ANNA FAEQUHAR 

answerable to the movement of govern- 
mental cog-wheels, to find out what a cer- 
tain person who had more keenness of 
perception and more literary ability than 
they, was saying about them. That is 
what made this author an interrogation 
point which many desired to have ex- 
plained. And that is the reason why 
" The Inner Experiences of a Cabinet Offi- 
cer's Wife" was a story that found itself 
beside the glimmer of an unusual number 
of lamps upon an unusual number of lib- 
rary tables. 

There are certain characteristics which 
men admire in each other above all others. 
There are certainly some characteristics 
w T hich they do not expect to find in women, 
or, if they do expect to find them, they 
always imagine them to be far less devel- 
oped than in one of their own sex. That 
is the reason why the answer to the inter- 

269 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

rogation point above is, in many respects, a 
remarkable individual. 

Margaret Allston's real name, until Janu- 
ary, 1900, was Anna Farquhar, and as 
Anna Farquhar and as Anna Farquhar 
Bergengren she has possessed the quality 
of perseverance in an extraordinary meas- 
ure. 

Of Scotch-English ancestry, the forebears 
of Anna Farquhar first came to America in 
Lord Baltimore's time and were ceded 
property of considerable extent at a dis- 
tance of some forty miles from Baltimore, 
in Maryland. To this blood may perhaps 
be traced her ardent affiliation with Eng- 
lish friends and sympathy with English 
thinkers. She was born December 23, 1865, 
at Brookville, Indiana, her father being law- 
yer and congressman. Thus the author of 
certain phases of Washington life was early 
associated with diplomacy and diplomatic 
2T0 



ANNA FARQUHAR 

ideas. After a short residence in Cincin- 
nati, Ohio, her family moved to Indianap- 
olis, where Mr. Farquhar became president 
of one of the foremost city banks. Here 
the daughter received the usual education 
that falls to the lot of an American girl 
whose family are in the best of circum- 
stances. Similar to James Russell Lowell 
and other persons who left names of merit 
in literature or in art, her particular aver- 
sion was the study of mathematics. While 
still quite young she showed a distinct in- 
clination toward languages and history, and 
an overwhelming love for music. At six- 
teen she attended a boarding-school in 
Maryland, but soon returned to a life of 
the gayest society, "educating her heels 
far better than her head will ever be edu- 
cated." 

But this life soon palled upon the girl 
with ambition, for she had now determined 

271 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

upon a career and to obtain for herself a 
musical education. In order to realize the 
money for its pursuit, the family property 
was mortgaged and she left her native 
town for Boston. The death of her father 
several years before had made this a possi- 
bility. Here she struggled nobly to culti- 
vate her voice and soon received recognition 
of her growing musical powers by appoint- 
ment to a position in a church choir. But 
the raw east winds of New England had 
already begun to undermine a constitution 
never very robust, and her throat was so 
affected that further study was useless. 

The next few years of life were a gallant 
fight to attain sufficient strength to warrant 
a strenuous application to the musical 
career she was so bent upon, and a resi- 
dence in the genial Maryland climate and 
in New York and Washington stimulated 
the hope that, in the end, she might accom- 
272 



ANNA FARQUHAR 

plish the longed-for results of her pains 
and energy. 

It was now she first applied herself to 
literary work, for, not being able to sing, 
she found in this an outlet for artistic ex- 
pression. The next years were a period of 
toil, of sickness, and of renewed literary 
endeavor. 

As a teacher of singing she was still able 
to keep in touch with music, and, under 
the skillful treatment of a New York phy- 
sician the lost voice gradually returned, 
but it was very unstable. A visit to Eng- 
land shortly after a short residence in 
Boston, where she had held an editorship 
on a periodical devoted to music, decided 
her future career. The years of patient 
endeavor to be a musician had unfortu- 
nately been wasted as far as permanent 
results were concerned, for, said London's 
foremost teacher of music, "Your phys- 

273 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

ique and temperament can never stand 
the strain of the musical life." This was 
indeed a sad blow, but the many disap- 
pointments which had come in years gone 
by had perhaps prepared her for the ac- 
knowledgment of failure — not in will- 
ingness, or in fortitude, or in bravery, but 
in physical strength to stand the wear and 
tear of an exacting and strenuous profes- 
sion. It is for this grit and determination 
that Anna Farquhar is admired by her 
friends, and it is for this reason that 
her literary career has been a succession 
of upward steps upon the rungs of the 
ladder of literary fame. 

She herself says that hers is the gospel 
of work, that for years her life has been 
one of unremitting hard labor and struggle 
for very existence. A motto which hung 
in her room during her years of fierce 
combat bore the words " All things come 
274 



ANNA FARQUHAR 

round to those who will but wait." " And," 
she says, " to this I added out of my own 
belief, 'and work.' Work is the highest 
privilege and hope of mankind. And of late 
years I have taken to myself the beautiful 
Italian proverb ' When God shuts a door 
he opens a window.' " These are incidents 
which but prove her indomitable spirit of 
perseverance. 

"A Singer's Heart," published in Boston, 
was her first literary endeavor, and to 
some extent expressed the professional 
ambitions which she herself had experi- 
enced in her musical career. Although it 
was not a " popular " production, its notices 
were most flattering, and when a certain 
Philadelphia paper of distinct literary con- 
servatism bought twelve copies for its edi- 
torial staff, her spirits were naturally 
raised and stimulated to renewed endeavor. 

" The Inner Experiences of a Cabinet 

275 



LITTLE PILGEIMAGES 

Officer's Wife " she was well qualified to 
pen, for the associations she had formed 
with the life of the Capital were those 
which eminently fitted her for a description 
of the inside political and social workings of 
its complexities. A host of personal letters 
which crowded her mail showed that some 
shafts had struck dangerous ground, but 
the story swung gracefully on, through 
threatened libel suits and denunciations of 
every description. " There was not a 
single specific and living character in city 
life that was intentionally put down," she 
says, " with perhaps one exception, and 
that was of a woman, and by her permis- 
sion." 

"The Professor's Daughter" first ap- 
peared in the Saturday Evening Post, when 
it had its great expansion, a few years ago. 
It was the story of simple people in a 
simple Rhode Island country neighbor- 
276 



ANNA FARQUHAR 

hood, whose characteristics she well knew, 
for among them she has lived a qniet, stu- 
dious life for many summers. It contained 
that human element which has made both 
Shakespeare and Mark Twain immortal, 
and it was very popular. 

" Her Boston Experiences," which first 
appeared in a magazine, ran through 
many editions in book form. As some 
worthy New Englander has said : " Any 
good Bostonian who doesn 't mind a bit of 
satire at his own expense may send this 
description of his beloved city to strangers 
and foreigners with the serene conviction 
that they will thus gain a better idea of 
the place and society than any number 
of guide-books could afford. " It was 
trenchant, frank and comic, and gave an 
excellent picture of many sides of Boston 
life. It stopped at least one sale of real 
estate by a satirical slap at a part of town 

277 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

the reputation of which was morally ques- 
tionable, and it is said that a Cambridge 
professor has permanently annexed it to 
his lectures, to be read to the students as 
an antidote for some of his dryest hours. 

But this was not art of the highest type, 
and a woman who had studied the lives 
of Carlyle, Huxley, Darwin, Spencer, and 
other great thinkers of the middle nineteenth 
century, in order to imbibe their spirit of 
work and energy, was naturally desirous 
of accomplishing something of greater and 
more lasting artistic excellence. 

As a result of a sympathetic acquaint- 
ance with the territory occupied by the 
French Jesuits at the earliest period of 
their missionary efforts in North America, 
and also with Mr. Parkman's history of 
their vigorous lives, she received a vivid 
impression of the romantic possibilities of 
that period. This led to a rapid devel- 
278 



ANNA FARQUHAR 

opment of the romantic complications 
surrounding the hero of "The Devil's 
Plough," but the study of the French char- 
acteristics and habits of the seventeenth 
century required the painstaking investi- 
gation of several months before the plot 
could be expanded into a book. The 
material once at her command, the writing 
took but a short time. When the book 
had been completed she was temporarily 
exhausted; too much dramatic force had 
been expended in the preparation. As a 
play, in fact, it was first conceived, and 
that is why it found such immediate favor 
with the dramatic profession when it ap- 
peared in book form. The story is of a 
struggle between pure ideals and the baser 
emotions, in which the higher impulse 
eventually triumphs. It is not strange then 
that her feelings were similar to that of a 
great — perhaps the greatest — American 

279 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

sculptor, who, after completing a statue 
of marvelous spirit and expression, was 
forced to retire to the quiet of a country 
life for full six months. 

In January, 1900, Anna Farquhar was 
married to Ralph Bergengren, a talented 
Boston journalist. The marriage took 
place under circumstances of unusual ro- 
mance, for they were wedded at the side 
of her bed of illness, with only two or 
three witnesses present. 

As a type of Anglo-Saxon womanhood 
Mrs. Bergengren well exhibits her English 
ancestry. Above the medium height, with 
light hair, blue eyes, high color, and 
regular features, her personal appearance 
distinctly announces the land of her 
forefathers. That peculiar look of high 
intellectuality which is so marked in many 
literary women of our own country, is very 
prominent in the expression of her face. 
280 



ANNA FARQUHAR 

As a conversationalist she is brilliant, and 
is consequently much sought after as an 
addition to society. " But I seldom go," 
she says, " because I am here to work, and 
work and society are fatal and absolute 
enemies." 

Her literary method is to " walk miles 
and miles when a story comes to me, and 
when my story-people begin to talk, I sit 
and stitch on some hand sewing (when a 
man would smoke) until everything is 
ready to go down, then it goes like* an 
explosion of ideas, so to speak, followed by 
careful modelling and severe, searching 
criticism." With an individual who is so 
eager in the endeavor to perfect her art, it 
is indeed to be expected that the master- 
piece will yet come, although in her own 
words she tells us that " I cannot say that 
I have a conquest of the world in view ; my 
ambition always is simply to do my best." 

281 










-. • 



PAULINE BRADFORD MACKIE. 



PAULINE BRADFORD MACKIE 
(MRS. HOPKINS) 



j-v AULINE BRADFORD MACKIE 

r~^ has distinguished herself as a writer 
• of historical fiction, and for this her 
work is worthy of close consideration. 

Upon the question of the merits and de- 
merits of the historical novel has been 
spilled a vast amount of good ink. It has 
been a bitter and long-drawn quarrel and 
much argument has been used to further 
the pet opinions of partisans of either side. 
Yet, when everything is taken into consid- 
eration the weight of argument seems to be 
in the affirmative ; for, as an educational 
factor, is not the historical novel of real 
value? The hurry and rush in the life of 
the every-day American is, for the most 
part, an expenditure of energy towards the 

283 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

accumulation of riches. The present-day 
Yankee is more essentially a trader than 
were his ancient Dutch progenitors, and 
although the education of the average citi- 
zen is high, it has usually been in some 
specific channel, and to the neglect of that 
knowledge which has been considered of a 
superficial character. History is a branch 
of learning in which the average business 
mind has not been especially well-grounded 
in the course of its preliminary training, 
and that is the reason why the historical 
novel fills a needed gap in the lives of a 
busy people. 

Dealing honestly with ourselves, we are 
obliged to acknowledge that there are 
many and wide breaches in our knowledge 
of history, and even in the knowledge of 
the history of our own country. Perhaps 
the most trivial historical romance that we 
meet with, may fill a gap that we are 
284 



PAULINE BRADFORD MACKIE 

ashamed to acknowledge. It may even 
stimulate our interest to such an extent 
that we are desirous of getting the facts 
first-hand, and search the library shelves for 
the volume of reference that bears directly 
upon our subject, and in this way accumu- 
late a number of facts that are certainly of 
cultivating and broadening influence. The 
novels of Miss Johnston have done much to 
foster a concern in the annals of early 
Colonial Virginia; and two works, the 
"Life of John Paul Jones" and that of 
Charles James Fox, were directly de- 
pendent upon the popularity of " Richard 
Carvel." Is it possible to point to a novel 
of the realistic school which set people to 
profitable employment of their intellects, 
and to the discussion of events which have 
helped to make world history? 

The work of Pauline Bradford Mackie 
does not exhibit the early influences of her 

285 



LITTLE PILGKIMAGES 

literary career as do the creations of some 
other authors who have passed through a 
similar period of apprenticeship. For two 
years after graduation from the Toledo 
High School, she was engaged in writing 
for the Toledo Blade, but perhaps with not 
sufficient seriousness, for, at the time, she 
was anxious to become an artist, and was 
almost as busy with the brush and pencil as 
with the pen. 

This career, however, she soon aban- 
doned for that of literature, and although 
her early contributions to magazines (be- 
sides the work upon the paper) were very 
numerous, she frankly admits that they 
were so seldom accepted that she has lost 
all track of them. 

Although born in Connecticut, at Fair- 
field, in 1873, her life has been spent 
in Ohio. Her father, the Rev. Andrew 
Mackie, an Episcopal clergyman and grad- 
286 



PAULINE BRADFORD MACKIE 

uate of Brown University, was a scholar of 
repute, and from him she inherits her love 
for writing and for good literature. 

Perhaps no embryo writer of romance, 
who eventually has made a reputation of 
worth, had more trying experiences than 
fell to her when first she essayed the task 
of authorship. The old Peterson Magazine 
published two of her early ventures, but 
never paid for them, and the first story for 
which she was ever paid appeared in Worth- 
ingtorfs Magazine, which issued only one 
number subsequent to that in which her 
article was published. Her first long story, 
" Mademoiselle de Berny," had a conflict- 
ing career with the second, "Ye Lyttle 
Salem Maide," which possesses a distinctly 
humorous side. The first had been re- 
fused by a Philadelphia house, but, as they 
wished a girl's story of considerable length, 
" Ye Lyttle Salem Maide " was written and 

287 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

sent to them. Again they were dissatis- 
fied, and sent it back with the statement 
that it was of but forty thousand words in 
length, and they wished it to be extended 
to sixty. So it was conscientiously re- 
written, and, when the task was completed, 
word was despatched the critical publishers. 
Again they were dissatisfied, this time with 
some point of trivial importance, so the 
manuscript was promptly forwarded to a 
New York house, which accepted it under 
the proviso that it be cut down to thirty 
thousand words, or ten thousand below the 
original number. Its patient author once 
more rewrote the tale from the very begin- 
ning, and sent it back. Meanwhile " Made- 
moiselle de Berny," the first manuscript, 
had been accepted by the head of a Boston 
firm, and had appeared upon the book- 
stands. To its publisher was depatched 
word of the acceptance of the second manu- 
288 



PAULINE BRADFORD MACKIE 
i 

script, and a telegram from him the day fol- 
lowing was to the effect that, as the pub- 
lisher who had risked a venture upon the 
first book, it was certainly right that he 
should have the second. The book was 
accordingly withdrawn from the New York 
firm, as no contract had yet been signed, 
and was immediately mailed the second 
house; but again arose a complication. The 
head of the firm, who had made all nego- 
tiations, seriously objected to the character 
of Cotton Mather, and likewise wished 
fifteen thousand words added to the book. 
So the greater part of the entire manuscript 
was for the third time rewritten, and in 
this form it appeared in print. " Since its 
publication," she tells us, " I have never had 
the courage to read it through." 

In spite of the trials and tribulations of 
"Ye Lyttle Salem Maide" before her final 
bow to society, the criticisms of the press 

289 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

were most favorable to her general appear- 
ance, and there was an unnsual number of 
people who made her acquaintance, and did 
so with pleasurable interest. The scenes of 
the various fortunes which were her lot 
took place within the ancient town of 
Salem, at a time when the narrow-minded 
and bigoted inhabitants were in the height 
of the semi-religious frenzy over the crime of 
witchcraft. The fact that Miss Mackie's 
grandmother was Mehitable Bradford, a 
direct descendant of the governor of Massa- 
chusetts, is what first turned her fancy to 
the events she here described, and following 
the advice of Louisa M. Alcott, who was of 
the opinion that, to write a book of interest, 
one must "plunge into the heart of a story 
and open it with a conversation, allowing 
the actors to unfold the plot and themselves 
dramatically," she had produced a story 
that had unquestioned merit. " Mademoi- 
290 



PAULINE BRADFORD MACKIE 

selle de Berny," a romance of Valley Forge 
and of George Washington, as has been 
shown, had outdistanced " Ye Lyttle Salem 
Maide" in a somewhat complicated race 
for publication. 

Perhaps, as an eminent reviewer has re- 
marked, this taste for the historical novel has 
been greatly stimulated by the war with 
Spain, for although we, as a nation, have al- 
ways been patriotic, there has been nothing 
actively exciting to our patriotism for a 
whole generation. The battles in Cuba 
stirred up an endless amount of enthusiasm, 
and the pleasant consciousness that we were 
a world power and a great and powerful 
nation that came to us after the battle of 
Manila Bay, was something almost new, 
and something that it took some time to 
realize. For twenty years or more the 
patriotic societies had been trying to 
make us fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, 

291 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

nephews, nieces and cousins of Colonial 
and Revolutionary heroes, but with ill suc- 
cess. Now everyone was sure that his 
ancestors had been sterling heroes with 
musket and sword, and it was but natural 
that all should be interested in the times 
of those who had made the beginnings of 
the country's greatness. This is a perfect- 
ly reasonable argument, but the fact that 
the realistic school had flooded the great 
literary sea with a mass of miserable mate- 
rial which people were expected to read 
and enjoy, yet could not, on account of 
its absolute worthlessness, is perhaps an- 
other reason. The same critic spoken of 
above has put the matter very tersely. He 
says: 

"We found the workmanship (of the 
realistic novel) on a par with the hurried 
stuff that the reporters for the daily news- 
papers turn out at breakneck speed while 
292 



PAULINE BRADFORD MACKIE 

the presses and the newsboys wait. "We 
do not read the novels to be instructed. 
We are not hungry for sociological facts 
and conclusions when we take up a book 
for an evening's entertainment. No, we 
want to be entertained by being removed 
out of ourselves. But I would rather be 
myself and bear with my own infirmities 
and perplexities than to spend a whole 
evening with a lot of very dull people in 
my neighbor's kitchen. Now, your realist 
of the second or third class takes you into 
a kitchen through the area door, and he 
does his very best to make you feel that 
you are one of that circle of domestics. I 
have no objection to kitchens and none to 
domestics. Both, in our present scheme 
of economy, are necessary. But if I go to 
a kitchen or am taken there, I want it 
to be worth while." 

In "A Georgian Actress," which ap- 

293 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

peared in 1900, there was sufficient his- 
torical background to appeal to the most 
disinterested respecter of American history, 
and a story of considerable interest, told 
with naive freshness that was certainly in- 
vigorating. The " Georgian Actress " was 
Mistress Anne Johnson, daughter of Sir 
William Johnson, agent of King George 
III. among the Indians, and residing at 
Johnson Hall on the Mohawk, in the years 
preceding the Revolution. Here she was 
brought up in strict seclusion with her 
younger sister Mary — here called Peggy 
— and under the tutelage of Madame Van 
Vrankin, a personage who in youth had 
jilted Sir William and then married a 
young Dutch soldier. But the frontier life 
had not interested her as had the frivolities 
of social London, and there she spent a gay 
and joyous existence until the death of her 
husband in a battle with the Indians. Feel- 
294 



PAULINE BRADFORD MACKIE 

ings of the deepest remorse no doubt 
prompted her to take upon herself the 
education of Sir William's children, and to 
leave to them her fortune. A young 
hunter, Daniel Claus, who subsequently 
turned out to be Madame Van Vrankin's 
son, and the heir to her estate, now entered 
the story, and with him Anne fell desper- 
ately in love, but a journey to England 
which she soon took with her younger 
sister, temporarily separated the lovers. In 
London she became the protege of the 
immortal Garrick, with whom she appeared 
upon the stage, but the frontier lover 
eventually appeared and claimed her as his 
own. The scenes in London were an ex- 
cellent portrait of the times of King George 
the Third, "snuffy old drone from the Ger- 
man hive," and the view of Garrick, who 
" damned America with polysyllabic oro- 
tundity and thoroughness," was quite true 

295 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

to the conception of him one gathers from 
histories of the time. The effeminate 
Horace Walpole and gruff Dr. Johnson 
were likewise present. The book, in fact, 
showed genuine good workmanship and 
study, and gave the reader some valuable 
knowledge, instead of smearing a homely 
subject with dirt and other filth, and serv- 
ing it up with the plea that this was realism 
and hence should be pleasing to the palate. 

One descriptive paragraph is worthy of 
quotation for the delicate, almost Steven- 
sonian, treatment of the landscape : 

" 4 It is smoke from old Maushape's pipe,' 
said the Indian, as the hazy air grew bluer, 
filling the gaps with purple. Morning 
after morning the sun came up and the 
delicate hoar-frost vanished like a breath. 
Each moment of the magic days seemed de- 
liciously prolonged. The tangled branches 
of the blackberry and the sumac's velvet 
296 



PAULINE BRADFORD MACKIE 

plumes flamed along the byways and the 
outskirts of the forest." 

Although it would seem that such a 
fragile bit of prose must have been written 
in the very atmosphere of the land in which 
the scenes of the story were laid, such was 
not the case. " A Georgian Actress " was 
written at Berkeley, California, where Mrs. 
Hopkins had gone with her husband, Dr. 
Herbert Miiller Hopkins, who was a profes- 
sor at the University, and who now occupies 
the chair of Latin at Trinity College, Hart- 
ford, Conn. Here, too, her latest novel, 
dealing with Washington life during the 
Civil War, was written. It is called " The 
Washingtonians," and in it she has forsaken 
the Colonial period of American history, in 
which she has been so successful, for that 
of a later date, and one that is better known 
to the readers of the present day. For this 
reason, it will be more difficult to please. 

297 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

Mrs. Hopkins is fond of gardening, of 
flowers, and of long walks. She is likewise 
fond of animals and has several beautiful 
Irish setters. One handsome dog she re- 
cently lost was named Shamrock, and was 
of such a noble nature that she has in mind 
a story to write of him. Perhaps it will be 
her next venture. 



298 




MARY JOHNSTON, 



MARTJOHNSTON 



T ^AKLY in 1898 the manuscript of a 
g^ Virginian romance came to the 

Boston office of Houghton, Mif- 
flin & Co. bearing a new name — Mary 
Johnston. In time the manuscript passed 
through the hands of half a dozen readers, 
who approved it unanimously, and it was 
published under the title of " Prisoners of 
Hope." That was not its original title, by 
the way; but it was the title finally agreed 
upon by the author and the publishers. 
The instantaneous success of " Prisoners of 
Hope," and the quick bound of its writer to 
a place among the literary celebrities of the 
country, are facts too well known to dilate 
upon. 

We may at this point pardonably remark 

299 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

upon the readiness with which Miss John- 
ston was admitted into the company of 
novelists related to one of our foremost pub- 
lishing houses. Her case is not an exception: 
it is the rule. The notion that the young 
author must sail against contrary winds is 
still, apparently, as prevalent as ever. To 
be sure, now and then, it seems to be a 
very substantial notion. We know that 
Stephen Crane's "Maggie" was first re- 
jected, and afterward — when it became 
popular — claimed by a certain publisher. 
"Helen's Babies," another book notable for 
its popularity, was ragged from travel when 
accepted. There are other noteworthy 
instances of publishers' hindsight or unwis- 
dom ; but, even taken collectively, they do 
not constitute the rule. So, we mention the 
fate of the "Prisoners of Hope," the first 
work of a writer with neither name nor 
influence, as an example of the general 
300 



MARY JOHNSTON 

recognition of talent by American pub- 
lishers. 

Miss Johnston, at the time of the publi- 
cation of her first novel, was twenty-eight. 
She was born in Buchanan, Virginia, just 
where the winding James pushes its way 
through the Blue Ridge, on November 21, 
1870. Her great-great-great-grandfather, 
Peter Johnston, came to Virginia by way 
of Holland early in the eighteenth century. 
He brought with him wealth and influence. 
One of the memorials of his beneficence is 
the land on which stands the college of 
Hampden-Sidney. He had three sons, Peter, 
Andrew and Charles. Peter, the eldest, 
who rode in Light Horse Harry Lee's legion, 
was the father of General Joseph E. John- 
ston. The second son, Andrew, was the 
author's great-great-grandfather. He mar- 
ried Anna Nash, through whom Miss John- 
ston is descended from Colonel John Nash, 

301 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

a valiant figure in the French and Indian 
wars, and, during the Revolution, the mem- 
ber from Prince Edward County in the 
Virginia House of Delegates. There 
were other distinguished Nashes — John, of 
Templeton Manor, in 1738, Justice of Hen- 
rico County, Virginia ; Abner, a member 
of the Continental Congress, and at one 
time governor of North Carolina ; Francis, 
— General Nash, — who fell at German- 
town. On her mother's side, the author of 
" Prisoners of Hope " is strongly Scotch- 
Irish — a lineage which runs back to one of 
the thirteen apprentices that closed the 
gates of Londonderry during the siege of 
1680. Thirty years ago her mother was 
described as a " gentle, shy young creature," 
with a " dowry of sweet, feminine traits." 

The father of the author, John William 
Johnston, started life humbly in the village 
of Buchanan. His mother, too, was Scotch. 
302 



MARY JOHNSTON 

During the War of the Rebellion he served 
as a major of artillery in the Confederate 
army. It is related that in 1864 — the 
year in which, by the way, Hunter's raiders 
destroyed that part of Buchanan in which 
his house stood — Major Johnston was sent 
from Chattanooga to Atlanta for medical 
treatment. There he was the guest of 
Mr. John Paul Jones, whose sister, Mrs. 
Ballard, later established a school for girls. 
Naturally enough, when Mary, the oldest of 
the six Johnston children, and Eloise, her 
sister, grew up, they were put in Mrs. 
Ballard's care. 

Miss Johnston has from her birth gener- 
ally been in poor health. This physical 
weakness early developed in her a taste for 
books. Besides, her imagination was dili- 
gently cultivated by her father's mother, 
said to have been a woman of rare force 
and beauty of character, and of strong intel- 

303 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

ligence, who, until her death, which hap- 
pened when her granddaughter was eight, 
taught Mary much more than the average 
child ever learns. For several years after- 
ward, Mary's aunt was her teacher; and 
later the child had a governess. " It was all 
very easy, desultory schooling," writes to us 
one who is exceptionally familiar with the 
author's career. " Her health was always 
frail, and there were many interruptions, 
but whether sick or well she was continu- 
ally reading. There was no restriction 
laid upon her in this respect, and she read 
what she pleased — poetry, history, fiction 
— whatever came to her hand. Scott and 
Dickens she read and reread, and she early 
acquired a love for Shakespeare." 

Indeed, after she had discovered some 
old documents in an out-of-the-way closet, 
and had constituted herself a sort of libra- 
rian, reading and arranging the writings 
304 



MARY JOHNSTON 

from morning to evening, it was pre- 
dicted that she would yet write a book. 
A safe prediction, it proved to be ; a much 
safer prediction than to say that a little 
girl who says her morning and evening 
prayers fervently will yet be a nun. 

She was a self-reliant child, too. There 
is a story that runs : 

" Once, when only six years old, happen- 
ing to go too near an open grate, her dress 
took fire, and she was soon in a light blaze. 
She was alone ; but, rolling herself in the 
hearth rug, she extinguished the flames, 
saying, when asked why she adopted such 
a method, that her grandmother had told 
her of a little girl who had wrapped her- 
self up in a blanket on a similar occasion, 
and that she thought the rug would do as 
well." 

" The distinguishing characteristic of 
the future author at this period," says the 

305 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

one who tells the fire story, "was an 
unusual quantity of closely-curled yellow 
hair, a lock of which was clipped from her 
tiny head soon after her birth and sent as 
a sample to her maternal grandparents in 
West Virginia." 

Meantime, since the close of the war, 
Major Johnston, a civil engineer by pro- 
fession, had become interested in several 
railways in the South, and in 1885 his 
pressing business caused the removal of 
the family from Buchanan to Birming- 
ham, Ala., where for the most part the 
Johnstons have since made their home. 
The year following the settlement in Bir- 
mingham Mary and her sister were sent to 
the Ballard school in Atlanta ; but three 
months at school hurt Mary's health so 
severely that she returned to Birmingham, 
thenceforth to educate herself according 
to her own disposition. However, when, 
306 



MARY JOHNSTON 

in 1887, her mother died, Miss Johnston, 
notwithstanding her poor health, under- 
took the management of the household — 
a management which she exercises up to 
the present time. 

The year after her mother's death Mary 
and her father visited Europe. This visit 
may be spoken of as a turning-point in her 
life, for notes on it, contributed to a little 
Virginia newspaper, made up her first 
literary offering. But, although she has 
moved hither and thither, Miss Johnston 
has spent at least a part of every year in 
Virginia — lately on Cobb's Island, a small 
spot just off the eastern shore. The hills 
and mountains of which she is so fond are 
prominent in the landscapes in " Prisoners 
of Hope," while the shores and marshes 
described in " To Have and to Hold " have 
familiarized themselves to the author during 
her periodical sojourns on Cobb's Island. 

307 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

It is said that when Miss Johnston was 
a young girl she drew a crayon portrait of 
her father's brother, which " indicates the 
force with which her talents might have 
flowed in that channel had not another 
been cut for them by nature." We men- 
tion the portrait incident merely to empha- 
size the early rise of her independence and 
ambition. She was an uncommon child in 
many respects ; but they who predicted 
that some day she would write a book 
judged her best. The prediction was 
realized during the winter of 1896. 

For three years previously the Johnstons 
had gone to New York after leaving Vir- 
ginia. In 189-4 Mary virtually became an 
invalid. Forced to lie still, she read and 
studied until her mind craved recreation ; 
then she took up her pencil. It will 
hardly surprise any reader to learn that 
her sentiments at first found expression in 
308 



MARY JOHNSTON 

verse, but metre and rhyme were driven 
away when the scheme of " Prisoners of 
Hope " presented itself. She wrote the 
story literally page by page. She was 
inexperienced in the art of constructing 
a story, and felt her way slowly, sensi- 
tively ; besides, her health was frailer than 
ever, and the cares of the household still 
devolved upon her. So, the writing of 
her first novel occupied more than a year 
and a half. It was her secret. Surprise 
struck every member of the family when 
she exhibited the letter informing her that 
the story was acceptable. " Prisoners of 
Hope " was indeed successful, but it was 
its successor, "To Have and to Hold," 
that emblazoned Mary Johnston's name. 

" To Have and to Hold " established a 
record in sales among books written lately 
by American women — a fact not to be de^ 
predated by the extraordinary popularity 

309 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

of Miss Runkle's " Helmet of Navarre." 
"To Have and to Hold" appeared in a field 
of unprecedentedly strong competitors. 
The work of virtually a new writer, it 
would have done well to finish inside the 
distance flag, to use the horseman's par- 
lance ; instead, however, of finishing thus 
modestly, it challenged the leader, and 
rightfully enough, for it had all the char- 
acteristics of a popular favorite. It is — 
we may still speak of it in the present 
tense — an extremely enjoyable story. The 
characters are vividly portrayed ; the scenes 
fit together smoothly and naturally; the 
spirit of the times with which the story 
deals is well sustained. " To Have and to 
Hold," in short, is the work of a born 
story-teller. If we are to give assent to 
the opinion that a novel should be mere 
entertainment, then each of Miss John- 
ston's novels may be included in the best 
310 



MARY JOHNSTON 

of modern fiction, and, by the same token, 
the Virginian lady may be regarded as a 
very successful novelist. Her latest story, 
" Audrey," has been interesting as a serial. 
What it will prove to be as a book, shown 
among hundreds of other books seeking the 
favor of the public, is only to be conjectured. 

We are indebted to a Southern friend for 
the following information : 

"Miss Johnston's home in Birmingham 
is, in some respects, typical of the old 
homes of the South, without, however, 
suggesting the Colonial. It is set well back 
from the street, and the balconies and the 
exterior are decidedly attractive, and the 
filmy draperies at the long French windows 
suggest the charming sunlit apartments of 
a well-regulated home. The library where 
Miss Johnston does her work is fined with 
books. It is a long, attractive apartment, 
through the windows of which one gets a 

311 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

broad view of the sky. Her desk lies 
open, and the morning's mail is scattered 
around. 

•• A black and gold clock ticks away on 
the mantel shelf. Above the bookcases are 
a number of marble busts. It is a room with 
the atmosphere of books and pictures. . . . 
The author is not very tall, and her figure 
is slender and fragile. She carries herself 
well and has that high-bred air that gives 
her a distinctive charm in any assembly. 
Her eyes are large and brown, with little 
necks of gold. Her light brown hair is 
soft and wavy and she wears it simply. 
She dresses quietly and fashionably. Her 
tastes are those of a charming woman, who, 
although unconventional, res ects every 
propriety. Briefly, her life is that of any 
high-bred, aristocratic girl of the South."' 

Miss Johnston's remarks to interviewers 
usually take this form: M I am glad to 
312 



MARY JOHNSTON 

talk of my work. I am, of course, gratified 
at its success and I appreciate all that is 
said, but I have made it a rule not to talk 
for publication.'" 



313 




^ii^y axders s - -i -.- 



ELLEN ANDERSON G. GLASGOW 



> ■ *HE majority of readers uncon- 
m sciously associate ever}?- author who 

- - "- has been born and bred south of 
Mason and Dixon's line with the depiction 
of life and character of the Southern peo- 
ple. It was, consequently, rather startling 
when there appeared a Virginian who knew 
northern life — even metropolitan life — as 
intimately as those who had been bred to 
it ; a Virginian author who did not write of 
gay and valorous colonial cavaliers — who 
did unheard-of deeds of bravery and courted 
unquestionably beautiful, bepowdered, be- 
quilted, and " Beshrew-me-gentle-Sir "-con- 
versing damsels, — or of molly-cotton-tails, 
of foxes, and of other shy, retiring animals, 
who held as brilliant and intellectual con- 

315 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

versation with each other as do the members 
of The Players. For this reason Miss Ellen 
Glasgow first drew attention to herself. 

" The Descendant," a rather morbid ex- 
position of the development and life of an 
intellectual hybrid, the offspring of a low 
woman and a highly intellectual man, was 
a story of distinct strength and character, 
in which there were touches of Stephen 
Crane, linked with biting sarcasm and with 
pessimistic wit. It appeared in 1899 and 
was the herald of more brilliancy to come. 
When we read that " Over the meadows 
the amber light of the afterglow fell like 
rain," there was something that reminded 
one quite forcibly of Crane's famous 
" amber-tinted river that purled along in 
whispering splendor," but there were other 
passages — in fact, many of them — which 
showed a depth of thought that was un- 
usual and also the most pleasing of all 
316 



ELLEN ANDERSON G. GLASGOW 

literary traits, that of deep scientific and 
philosophic reflection. 

Although a Virginian, Miss Glasgow 
knew the atmosphere of New York literary 
Bohemia which pervaded " The Descend- 
ant " and likewise " The Phases of an Infe- 
rior Planet," her second venture, for she had 
frequently come and gone on its easy-going 
tide. The fact that her forebears upon 
her father's side were all lawyers, judges, 
and the like, is accountable for her love of 
literature and of the literary life. She 
was born in Richmond, Virginia, and has 
lived a great deal at a country home near by, 
where she developed a love for the coun- 
try and for such natural things as earth 
and sky and the lesser animals, which is in 
great evidence in all her Avritings. As a 
child she was delicate, a fact that kept her 
from attending school with the other chil- 
dren, and perhaps accounted for the philo- 

317 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

sophic manner in which she quite earl}' 
regarded the progress of human events. 
Such learning as she received was won 
almost entirely by her own individual effort. 
The first simple step in reading and in -writ- 
ing she took unaided, and reading was not 
learned from school-books, but from long 
days spent over Scott's novels, when, 
spurred on by her delight in the stories 
which on wiuter evenings she had heard in 
the firelight from the lips of an elderly and 
affectionate aunt, she would spell out the 
words one by one. As she grew older, 
this love for books increased, and every- 
thing that she could lay her hands upon 
was absorbed with a greed that was insa- 
tiable. Of course, much fell into her hands 
that was unadulterated trash, but likewise 
much that had intrinsic merit. By the time 
she was thirteen she had learned to enjoy 
Robert Browning, and he has never lost the 
318 



ELLEN ANDERSON G. GLASGOW 

first place among the poets, in her heart, 
although Swinburne is likewise a favorite. 
Perhaps many children of unusual intel- 
lectuality have displayed an equal love for 
books, but in Miss Glasgow, the imagina- 
tive development soon took a scientific- 
trend, which is quite unusual. At eight- 
een she began a systematic study of politi- 
cal economy and of socialism, which brought 
her mind to a serious point, where the 
imaginative flights, stimulated by fairs* 
stories and by writers of romance, were 
held in check by the ponderous thoughts 
of the world's greatest men of science. 
One who is well qualified to speak says 
that " law, and the evolution of phenomena 
by means of law now became her point of 
view, and a viewpoint froni which she 
has never sweiwed. In spite of this love 
and absorption of abstract sciences, her 
inborn love of stories has remained." 

319 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

The most prominent characteristic of 
Miss Glasgow's personality is well shown 
by the following incident : In response to 
a request for her biography from a literary 
periodical, she wrote : "I remember once 
trying to write a sketch of my life and 
getting as far as 4 1 was born.' To this 
day I have found nothing more to add; 
and surely to be born is no difficult accom- 
plishment. Apart from this I have made 
it a rule never to publish personal things ; 
— not that I am peculiarly modest or 
even painfully dull, but, if the truth must 
be told, even my friends admit that I never 
say anything interesting about myself." 
This modesty is paramount, and it is for 
this reason that she is seldom seen in so- 
ciety. Society does not attract the major- 
ity of literary people, — some, perhaps, 
as a means for the study of human eccen- 
tricities, — for there is much else for them 
320 



ELLEN ANDERSON G. GLASGOW 

to be thinking about. Miss Glasgow is no 
exception to the rule. She is quiet and 
reserved in the company of others, although 
when her interest or sympathy is awak- 
ened, the ready Southern cordiality warms 
her manner. 

The knowledge of the law of evolution 
and the study of Spencer, of Darwin and 
the other great scientists, she says, has been 
one of the greatest pleasures of her exist- 
ence. Long before she fully grasped the 
significance of the law of evolution, she 
felt, rather than realized, the close relation- 
ship between man and beast. Her love of 
animals is paramount. Even the birds of the 
air are her pets; and their clamor at her 
window often sends her flying from her 
desk to the pantry, to secure the supply of 
crumbs they have learned to expect from 
her hands. This love of hers is combined 
with an interest that is all-absorbing. The 

321 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

habits, the actions, the different character- 
istics of this lower animal world interest 
her beyond measure, on account of their 
analogies to the higher life of man, here 
paralleled in miniature. 

She had begun to scribble verses by the 
time she could read in words of two sylla- 
bles, and while yet a mere girl wrote an 
entire novel which she had good judgment 
and tact enough not to afflict upon some 
struggling publisher's literary advisor. Al- 
though her first success came with " The 
Descendant " (finished before her twenty- 
second birthday ) she had written other 
articles before and they had been published 
in magazines. Success did not come easily ; 
she had always worked hard, both with 
brain and with pen, and she still writes 
with care — and continually. 

From her very soul, she has remarked, she 
believes that " the true success is to labor." 
322 



ELLEN ANDERSON G. GLASGOW 

This infinite care and painstaking en- 
deavor was well evinced in certain passages 
of her third book, " The Voice of the 
People," a story of her own Virginia and 
its curious class distinctions. The famil- 
iarity and accuracy with which the working 
of party machinery was given in minute 
detail, exhibited a careful and conscientious 
study of political ways and means. We 
are told that as early as 1897, when the 
plot for the story was first beginning to 
take shape in her mind, she drove more than 
twenty miles over the mountains, and in the 
hottest of August weather, in order to sit 
through two days of a Democratic conven- 
tion which had been called in order to nom- 
inate a governor. She was smuggled in at 
the stage door of the opera house, where 
the convention was held, through friendly 
influence, and sat upon the stage surrounded 
by delegates from all parts of the State. 

323 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

She and her companion were the only 
women in the building. By close observa- 
tion she was thus able to give an inside 
view of political life, the truth and con- 
sistency of which could be vouched for by 
actual facts. 

The influence of her favorite book, " The 
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," a book 
which she is never without, — for it accom- 
panies her even upon her travels, — was 
well shown in " The Voice of the People." 
The characters — all of them contemporary 
Virginians — were clearly delineated in a 
pungently philosophical vein, that exhibited 
the influence of the master mind which 
looked at reasons and motives and at 
broader questions than mere petty vain- 
glory and personal ambition. Her powers 
of observation were here at their maximum 
of efficiency because this was her own native 
heath; and the characters were those 
324 



ELLEN ANDERSON G. GLASGOW 

with, whom she was more at home than 
with the over-educated and morbidly sensi- 
tive men and women who lived and died 
with " The Descendant " and drew breath 
in her " Phases of an Inferior Planet." 

The scene of the first half of the later 
novel was laid at Kingsborough, — readily 
recognized as Williamsburgh, Va., — a town 
which " dozed through the present to dream 
of the past, and found the future a night- 
mare," and the latter half in Miss Glasgow's 
native town of Richmond. The characters 
too were those she knew from childhood. 
There was the old Judge, a genuine and 
noble Virginian gentleman, " from his clas- 
sic head to his ill-fitting boots " ; General 
Battle, " a colonel during the war but raised 
to the rank of general by the unanimous 
vote of his neighbors on his return home" ; 
Miss Chris, his amiable sister, who had 
never surrendered and was " happy for forty 

325 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

years with a broken heart"; Eugenia, a 
sweet and capable heroine ; and the hero, 
Nick Burr, a rufus-headed son of the people, 
a member of that well-known Southern 
sect known as the " poh white trash," yet 
with genuine ability and infinite persever- 
ance. His progress from the shiftless 
ranks in which he was born to the power- 
ful upper class of the gentry, constituted 
the motive and force of the tale. From 
the time when he interrupted a conversa- 
tion between the kind-hearted Judge and 
his own tobacco-chewing father with the 
remark that " There 's nothhY in farmin', 
I 'd ruther be a judge,' to the moment when 
he reached the governmental chair, by means 
of his own sterling merit and indomitable 
will, the progress of Nick Burr was replete 
with those perfectly human and logical 
events which belong to the life of the 
individual who is determined to be in 
326 



ELLEN ANDERSON G. GLASGOW 

the front ranks of those who enter the 
fierce political strife. It was "the survi- 
val of the fittest " exemplified in present- 
day Virginian life. 

The negro element was of course subor- 
dinate, but lent a picturesque background 
and furnished some wit and still more 
humor. There were Uncle Ish and Aunt 
Verbeny, who gave vent to many delight- 
ful bits of unintellectual philosophy. One 
was that it was evident that it was a civil 
war, because when the Yankees rode up 
to the house and their hostess came out 
smiling and giving them welcome, they 
stood there bowing and scraping, and it 
was " Es civil as if dey 'd come a' 
cotin'." 

With « The Voice of the People " Miss 
Glasgow had remained at home, and it 
was good that she had done so. She had 
written the manuscript only when in the 

327 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

mood for it, and it was therefore well done, 
and thoroughly well done. Her method of 
work is to write when the spirit is upon 
her, and then to write as long as she feels 
physically and mentally fit; thus her periods 
of work vary from one to three, four and 
often twelve hours a day, although the latter 
is quite unusual. " The Descendant " was 
written in a year, but she worked at it 
fitfully, sometimes leaving off for a full 
month. To each of the two subsequent 
books she devoted two years of study and 
of careful preparation. 

At present she is engaged in the con- 
struction of a novel dealing with the Civil 
War and the Virginian life of that period. 
It is to treat not only of the events which 
transpired during the four years of conflict, 
but also of those just previous to the out- 
break of hostilities. From one who is such 
a careful and exact reasoner it will be in- 
328 



ELLEN ANDERSON G. GLASGOW 

teresting to view the final resultant, and 
see whether or not it will be colored with 
partisan feeling or will give a broad and 
unbiased opinion of those events which 
are still fresh in the memories of many 
Virginians. In view of the recent triumph 
of " The Crisis," the outcome will be most 
interesting to the world of letters. 



329 



BERTHA RUNKLE 



rHE "Helmet of Navarre" was a 
remarkable book for many reasons, 
but the fact that its author was 
little over twenty years of age was not the 
most remarkable. Biyant had written 
" Thanatopsis " before he had reached that 
age, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps composed 
" The Gates Ajar " at nineteen. The most 
interesting fact about the production of 
"The Helmet of Navarre" is, that its 
author has never even caught a glimpse 
of the shores of France; indeed, she has 
seldom been beyond the boundaries of 
New York State. The castles in which 
royalty here disported were true castles in 
the air. In considering the book, there- 
fore, we view what may be accomplished 

331 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

by long-distance flights of the imagina- 
tion. 

Miss Bertha Runkle is a product of the 
literary atmosphere of New York combined 
with the healthy and muscle-giving proper- 
ties of golf and of tennis ; thus disproving the 
oft-quoted and quite prevalent theory that 
literary minds and frail bodies are insepa- 
rably linked together. Although the State 
of New Jersey is associated in the minds 
of most of us with sand-flats, mosquitoes 
and malaria, it has the honor of claiming 
the birthplace of the newest addition to 
American expounders of historical romance. 
The mind of Miss Bertha Runkle was first 
stimulated to literary expression at Berkeley 
Heights, New Jersey ; a small place, a quiet 
place, and a distinctly suburban place; but 
in 1888 she and her mother moved to New 
York, where association with a more swiftly 
moving environment than that of a back- 
332 



BERTHA EUNKLE 

country town, did much to brighten an 
intellect which already showed signs of a 
brilliancy quite out of the ordinary. Her 
love of the good things in literature indeed 
comes honestly, for her father, Cornelius 
A. Runkle, who died when she was a young 
girl, was a well-known New York lawyer 
and for many years counsel for the New 
York Tribune, and her mother was, pre- 
vious to her marriage, an editorial writer 
on the same paper ; the first American 
woman, in fact, to be on the staff of a great 
metropolitan daily. 

When a very small child the author of 
" The Helmet of Navarre " showed distinct 
signs of romantic promise, for, while other 
infants were cooing sweet words of wisdom 
and of pseudo-love to dolls of paper and 
of wax, she was amusing herself by com- 
piling stories and by beginning to write 
them down. 

333 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

With, true Celtic genius, however, she 
would tire of them about the third chapter, 
and begin another one. Again, note the 
early expression of the real, artistic nature. 

Such education as it was her pleasure to 
be subjected to was first received at home 
and then at a fashionable New York board- 
ing-school, where yellow-backed novels were 
more popular than the works of Thackeray 
and Carlyle. This story-writing trick of 
hers, however, still remained, and in some 
way offset the moral degeneracy into which 
such dissipations as an over-indulgence in 
five-pound boxes of Huyler's or Mallard's, 
and in the matinee, threatened to plunge her. 
In 1893 her mother purchased a small piece 
of land at Onteora, Tannersville, N. Y., 
and upon it built a house where she and her 
daughter have lived every summer. It is 
here that Miss Runkle has followed the life 
of the typical American girl one sees in the 
334 



BERTHA RUNKLE 

centre pages in Life, and learned not only 
how to write a successful novel, but also how 
to swing a golf club, ride a wheel, drive a 
cart, and, in spite of endless skirts, play an 
excellent game of tennis. The virility which 
infused the pages of her first book was but 
the virility of her own nature. Spencer has 
said, " The book is the man himself. " Here 
is an excellent proof of the saying — only this 
time it is a woman. 

When Miss Runkle received a letter say- 
ing that her story would first be published in 
The Century Magazine and enclosing a check 
for serial rights, a smile of intense satisfac- 
tion passed over her face, as she held out the 
check for her mother to see ; and the subse- 
quent developments which the manuscript 
evolved when it appeared in printed form, 
have left that smile in possession of her 
features. 

One of the first things she did with her 

335 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

newly-acquired wealth was to purchase a 
pony and cart. The pony was "a very 
little one," but she made him extremely 
well acquainted with the mountain roads, 
and when the summer was over and it 
grew cold in Onteora, — too cold, in fact, 
for comfort, — she drove her mother all 
the way to New York. It took three whole 
days and they both enjoyed it. The pony's 
name is " Peggy," short for Pegasus. 

There is nothing of the blue-stocking, 
the Chautauquan assembly camp-stooler, 
the W. C. T. U. woman, or the intellec- 
tual hyena about Miss Runkle. In her 
own words, she says she " dislikes ex- 
tremely being looked at as a literary 
freak." If you should see her driving 
around Onteora in a short skirt, with her 
hair hanging down her back in two thick 
braids, you would never suspect that she 
is the author of one of the most popular 
336 



BERTHA RUNKLE 

novels of the past year, nor would you 
suspect it if you saw her dancing at one of 
the Inn's informal hops. She is as simple, 
as wholesome, as genuine, as any Ameri- 
can girl. She has always been extremely 
fond of history, biography, memoirs, and 
the like, so the study of " The Helmet of 
Navarre " was part of the fun. She had 
the story in her mind for two years or so, 
and the actual writing took about four 
months ; but she did n't put all her time 
upon it — the mornings only ; the after- 
noons were spent out of doors. 

The title of " The Helmet of Navarre " 
was taken from a passage in Lord Macau- 
lay's "Ivry," which its author adopted as 
a motto : 

Press where ye see my white plume shine 

amidst the ranks of war, 
And be your orinamme to-day, the helmet of 

Navarre. 

33T 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

The book came out with a great shout- 
ing, a banging of drums, blaring of 
trumpets, and tons of advertising, and it 
was not a book that one could easily 
ignore, for great black letters heralding 
its power, its beauty, and its great worth 
stared at one from the pages of every 
newspaper and magazine. In fact, a line 
in large letters upon the paper wrapper of 
the very book itself, quoted a contem- 
porary to the effect that "any writer of 
any age might rejoice in its equal." For 
this reason many read it who would not 
have otherwise done so, and the effect, on 
the whole, was very agreeable. 

The reader began with expectation of 
immediately seeing the king, or at least 
catching a glimpse of his plume, or his 
horse's heels, but such was not the case. 
The author's restraint in not at once hurl- 
ing this fiery meteor among the lesser con- 
338 



BERTHA RUNKLE 

stellations, inspired gratitude. Fictional 
kings are extremely difficult things to 
manage. Like the queen in "Alice in 
Wonderland," they are either continually 
in the way, or else are always thundering 
" Off with his, or her, head ! " For this 
reason Miss Runkle showed judicious fore- 
sight and a sense of the artistic that was 
very commendable, but his cause was at 
the bottom of the events which were 
primarily introduced. The power of the 
League and of Monsieur de Mayenne was 
dying and Henry was about to ascend the 
throne, when the story began. The great 
Due de St. Quentin was Henry's staunch 
partisan and had come up to Paris to 
flaunt his loyalty in the face of Mayenne. 
Felix Broux, servitor of the aforesaid, was 
the hero of the tale, and came to Paris at 
the same time, and immediately became 
involved in a number of plots, counter- 

339 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

plots, escapades, fights and brawls, that 
have happened to the innumerable fictional 
heroes of the France of that period, from 
the famous musketeers of Dumas to the 
rollicking blades of Stanley Weyman. The 
intrigue in which the youthful hero be- 
came implicated, was as complicated as the 
windings of the maze, from the looking- 
glass intricacies of which the gullible visi- 
tor pays a delicate sum to be extracted. 
The Due de St. Quentin and his son, the 
Comte de Mar, had become estranged 
through the villainies of one Lucas, who 
was employed as the Duke's secretary, but 
was in reality a nephew of Mayenne 
and a spy of the League. Felix Broux and 
the Comte de Mar became warm friends 
and moved from one peril to another with 
a cheerful indifference to sudden death 
that gladdened the heart. The former 
was the means of bringing about a recon- 
340 



BERTHA BUNKLE 

ciliation and understanding between father 
and son, and of exposing the evil machina- 
tions of Lucas, and thereafter served de 
Mar with unfailing loyalty and unswerv- 
ing purpose. Lucas, who was the evil 
genius of the tale, time and time again 
wove plot after plot with trigonometrical 
precision, but the St. Quentins, who were 
ever upon the brink of destruction, always 
managed to extricate themselves with the 
dexterity of a Sherlock Holmes. 

The love episodes were furnished by 
the Comte de Mar and a ward of the Due 
de Mayenne, Lorance de Montluc. Lorance 
eventually escaped from her guardian's 
house, and made a journey on foot to her 
lover in the camp of the Beamais at St. 
Denis, and the book ended with the cus- 
tomary union of two fond and loving 
hearts. There were the usual number of 
snares, secret passages, mysterious inns, 

341 



LITTLE PILGRIMAGES 

and rascally landlords, and, of course,^ many 
sparks from whizzing swords. The fact 
that the author eschewed the local color 
that is generally supposed to exist in turns 
of speech, in " characteristic " oaths and 
exclamations, such as, " By the second lit- 
tle finger of the Knight of Saint Madrid," 
M Ventre Saint Gris," etc., was decidedly a 
point in her favor. The few that were 
used had no taint of artifice, and the merit 
was everywhere in evidence. 

Considered, then, as an entity, " The 
Helmet of Navarre" was not "the most 
remarkable work of present-day fiction," 
as its publishers would have us believe, 
but a very creditable bit of writing, espe- 
cially for an author who had not yet reached 
the quarter-century mark ; and one which 
was read by a great many people simply 
from the fact of its having been vigorously 
brought to their attention. But the fact that 
342 



BERTHA RUNKLE 

it was the product of the American girl that 
we are so proud of, the American girl who 
can fish, and shoot, and do and dare, is its 
greatest merit. Vive lafemme Americaine! 



343 



